I Am Intelligence
by Bluejay141519
Summary: Jays past comes around with a vengeance, forcing him to deal with problems he'd much rather forget. Except he made a mistake all those years ago. He left someone alive. And now Intelligence is caught in the crossfire of a war Jay isn't sure he's going to win. At least, not alone. Linstead! with plenty of Jay!whump and fam!intelligence and angst and just literally everything...
1. Overture

**Hello party people! My full authors not is at the end **_**AND YOU GUYS NEED TO READ **__**ALL**_ _**OF IT!**_ **It has important shtuff.**

**All you need to know for this is that it contains child abuse. If you don't like it or that makes you uncomfortable then please don't go further. **

**Oh yes and Jay is about seven years old. (it is a prologue…) **

**Enjoy!:D**

**(Psssst-I don't Chicago PD or its characters. The only thing that's mine is the Original 7. Don't worry. I get to that.)**

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**Jay's P.O.V.**

**Miami, Florida. **

"Look at me you little shit!"

Another blow to the face sends me to the floor of my dimly lit kitchen. The room spins as I groggily lift my head, only to have my father's fist assist my throbbing face back onto the dirty tile.

He grabs my chin and twists it toward him. Struggling stay conscious, I groan in agony as stars explode behind my eyes.

"I told you to look at me! I'M YOUR FATHER, _YOU DO AS YOUR TOLD!" _

With that he lifts me up by the neck and throws me towards the door, which I manage to scramble out of before he can catch me. Believe it or not, my dad can run _very_ fast when hes drunk.

Bursting out into the dark city, I run as fast as I can down the river. My house,-shack, prison, whatever you wanna call it-, is right next to an open water drainage path that leads to the city treatment plant, although you can't really tell by looking at it. Its a sixteen foot wide concrete indent with dark, murky water flowing through it. Think a huge square concrete tunnel, with the top at ground level...and none existent. There is some fencing around it the closer you get into the main of Miami, but out here, in the outskirts of the city, its just wide open water. There's a lot of strong undercurrents too, so even if you can swim it's virtually impossible to get to the surface.

Moral of the story? You fall in, you're dead. Most of underground Miami calls it the Styx, from Greek mythology. The river of the underworld. Kinda fitting, actually. A lot of drug dealer put boat on it at night with their drugs to move them quickly to other locations. Living four feet from the river's edge gives me a unique kinda access to these drugs. That's what my dad was yelling about. Normally I pull the boats in, take some product, and let them go again. Whatever drug was being moved I gave to my dad, and he would be so high he would leave me alone.

One problem. The supply of these boats are not guaranteed. You see a year ago, a new drug lord started using them to move all his product. I started taking some, because he was too stupid or naive to put a bodyguard with the boat. He must've noticed that all of him shipments were coming in short, because last night there were three armed guys on there. I obviously couldn't get it, and my dad, short of his monthly high, got a tad bit angry.

He didn't mean to let me go either. When I get home tomorrow, I'm in for the beating of my life.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid! _I think to myself. Why the hell did I get him hooked?! It only gets him away from me for a day or two, and I should have known the free drugs wouldn't stay long. Now, unless I magically come up with a lot of coke, I'm gonna join all the dead fish in the Styx.

"WATCH OUT!" Out of nowhere, strong hands grab me and yank me backwards. I slam onto the cracked pavement beside the river and instantly feel blood start to pour from my noise. Huh. I don't get a nosebleed while getting the tar punched outta me but the moment I kiss pavement I'm Niagara falls.

"Are you okay?" Two black combat boots fill my vision. Looking up I find the source of the voice to be a girl, maybe a couple years older than me.

"Yeah, fine considering I was just side tackled into a concrete wall." The words come out of my mouth and I'm instantly scrambling to correct my rudeness.

"I-I mean, I'm okay, just a little blood. I'll be fine, you didn't do anything. Sorry." Her eyebrows raise in surprise.

"Don't apologize. It'll get you killed. And it was the ground, by the way." I'm thrown by her reaction.

"I-I'm sorry?" I ask, totally confused. She purses her lips.

"You said concrete wall. You fell onto the ground. There's a difference."

My eyes narrow and I scoff at her. "Not really, sunshine." She shakes her head, smirking at my official nickname for her. 'Sunshine' is the last thing one would think of looking at her. A black leather corset looking thingy covers her torso, chest included so you know shes not a stripper. A black jean jacket cuts off at her bra line, the frayed edged telling me she did it herself, probably with the knife she had strapped to the leg of her ripped black skinny jeans. All the dark she wears is contrasted by her slightly tan skin and dirty blond hair, that's almost a light brown.

Her feet are spread, left foot in front of the right. One hand has a thumb hooked onto her belt (which oddly looks like a type of seat buckle.) and the other rest on the handle of her knife. The sheath is strapped all the way around the top of her inner thigh, the blade itself resting in a black worn leather triangle that is tilted weird, so the tip of the six inch long blade is higher than the handle. The entire get up and attitude tells me that, while she can't be more than ten, she could kill me without any effort at all.

"Well." Sunshine says quietly. "Did I pass?"

"Pass? Pass what?"

She tilts her head to the side only slightly, eyes alit with amusement and I realize I've been staring at her for a good two or three minutes.

"You know for a smart kid, you're kinda stupid. I watched you analyze me." She pauses.

"And its and airplane buckle."

"Huh?!" I'm so lost now. My nose is still gushing and I'm starting to feel light headed. She pulls out a black and white handkerchief (which I smirk at) and tosses it to me.

"My belt. Your eyebrows knitted together once you saw it, which means you either don't know what a belt is or you've never been on an airplane. I'm guessing the latter, seeing as every time I've seen you, you're always wearing the same clothes. The buckle is the same they use on airplanes." I nod, glad she was finally making sense.

"So why were you gonna jump?" Aaaaaaand making sense goes out the window.

"Jum-What?! Who are you?!" I yell in desperation. She smiles before tipping her head back and laughing. The sound make me stumble back. Her laugh is sounds so….free. It's shocking. I've never heard anyone so happy. She stops immediately when I back up, her hand tightens on the knife. The action make me take a step further away. Her hand removes it self from the hilt.

"Hey, hey take it easy. I'm not gonna hurt you kid."

Swallowing I but as much scorn into my voice as possibly, hoping it hides my fear.

"I know."

Sunshine nods slowly. "How?"

"If you were going to hurt me you would have done it already." I say, praying its the truth. Another smile. Another nod of agreement. I step closer.

"So you gonna tell me why you want to kill yourself?"

"I don't." ...Do I?

"Uh-huh. And that's why you were about to run into the river?" She says pointing to the edge of the flowing water. There, about a foot in front of where she grabbed me is a sharp corner in the path of the Styx. If I had kept running I would be taking a boat to the underworld right now.

"I didn't see it. I wasn't looking. Just...concentrating on other things I guess." I get the this incredulous look from her.

"You mean that you weren't trying to die. You just have no spacial awareness."

I shrug my shoulder. She looks and me and shakes her head in amazement then holds out a hand.

"Rachel."

I look carefully in her eyes. I spent half of my seven years alive on the streets and during that time I've learned how to read people by their windows into their soles. Whoever said that metaphor deserves an olympic medal, because he was dead on. Her eyes are smart and look care-free, but underneath that is a world of pain and it's this pain that makes me trust her. She's like me: hurt, careful and wary of the world.

I shake her hand.

"Jayson." Rachel's face light up in a smile.

"Okay. So Jay, you ever been to the east side?" I shake my head no.

"Jay?" I question.

"Yup." She answer popping the p. "I'm to lazy to say 'Jayson'. Besides-" She turns and wraps an arm around my shoulders, making me walk with her down river.

" 'Jay' is _so _much more bad-ass."

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**YAAAAASSSS! ITS FINALLY HAPPENING! Sorry. I'm a little excited because I've been planning this story since December of 2014 and now its **_**FINALLY UP!**_

**Okay so a couple things Y'all need to know:**

**-yes Rachel is a big part of this story**

**-NO I am not pushing a romance between the two. I am a die hard linstead fan. (just go read Madness, you'll understand.)**

**-This story is gonna explore Jay Halstead's past, his time in Afghanistan, and of course how it plays into intelligence.**

_**THEREFOR- **_**as I said up top, this story will contain scenes with **_**child abuse, torture, graphic language and gory scenes. If this makes you uncomfortable then please don't read. **_

**I am gonna tell at the top of each chapter what is specifically in each chapter. (like a warning so you know)**

**Alrighty. Enough spoiler. Let me know what you guys think! BRING ON THE REVIEWS!**


	2. Do I Wanna Know?

**I am soooo sorry. I have no excuse for the enormous delay. None. At all. But hopefully you guys like it. It's kinda short I know but I'm setting the stage for y'all. Also, I get out of school in two weeks, so it's finals. Hence-I won't be posting anything quite soon, but I will be trying to work on things. **

**In case you haven't noticed I don't manage time well so my rule for myself is to alternate between here and The Fall. So the next cheater I post will be for that,then for this, then that, then this...you get the point.**

**Do I wanna know- Artic Monkeys**

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**Halstead's P.O.V**

It began on an ordinary Tuesday (I honestly couldn't tell you the date, I'm the kind of person who forgets their own birthday) one much like I'm sure you've experienced. The kind that's just completely stereotypical for your life. Think the most ordinary day you could possibly have. Get up. Shower. Get dressed. Food. Coffee. Work. Home. Dinner. Bed. Rinse and repeat.

That's how my day SHOULD have gone. Because that's how it started.

I crawled out of bed at 04:00, grumbling at myself for getting up so early as I search for my running sneakers. Just like I do every morning when I search my carpet with my hands because I literally can't open my eyes. Then I hit my head on the side of my bed while reaching for the shoes underneath it. Just like I do every morning. I seriously have permanent bruise there.

Throwing my shoes into the living room, I'm awake enough to do the basics, open the eyes, turn on the phone, find some clothes. You see there's a reason why all my running clothes are black, grey or blue. That way, no matter what I choose, I match. Which is good because my decision making skills are not up to par this early in the day.

I plug some head phones into my cell, set it to vibrate, then unplug it from the charger, slipping it inside a plastic case with a Velcro back. I then, stick the phone to the opposite Velcro on one of those running bands that's already wrapped around my arm. I slip on my shoes, grab my keys and exit my apartment, jogging down the stairs out into the cold Chicago morning. Shaking my hands to rid them of the cold, I turn my music to shuffle and set off on my daily 7 to 10 mile run.

The cool air nips my exposed skin, numbing my face as the strong base from Arctic Monkey's "Do I Wanna Know" flows through my earbuds, pulsing in my head.

This was the only part of my day that wasn't monotone. I thought about the first time I listened to this song on a run. I wasn't alone, but I remember I wanted to be. I was with my team. Not intelligence. I was with my team that I went into Afghanistan with. There were eight of us on that run. We came out of the desert with seven.

A sharp pang of guilt and grief (A friend of mine calls it the Devils combo) pulls at my heart, making my foot steps falter. Shaking my head to clear it, I expel the memories and push forward, getting lost to the music.

The sun is just rising over Lake Michigan when I make to the pier that signals the end of my run. I slow to a walk, my hands rise above my head, helping my chest expand. I spare a glance at my watch, checking my pace.

_7:02_

Not bad. My literal average pace every time I do a ten miler is a second or two away from seven flat. The irony is not lost to me.*

My phone vibrates on my arm, rudely jerking me out of my revere. It's my alarm, which I set to remind myself to get home. I give a wry smile to my situation, knowing I'll be scrambling with to complete my morning routine and get to work on time. I turn away from the now risen sun, and dart across the deserted city street, enjoying a relaxed run back to my apartment building, which is only about a half mile from the water.

I enjoy my normal cycle of urgency, frustration and panic that always has me showing up to work on time, hair still wet for my shower, forgetting something important, like breakfast.

By the way, food after a 7 mile run first thing in the morning, is very important. Or any long run for that matter. One time I decided to run ten at a 6:30 pace and didn't eat anything afterwards. I almost passed out on Lindsay going up the stairs to the bullpen. Yeah, _that_ was a fun day.

Anyway, I managed to remember everything except my coffee, which is ok because as I drop my jacket onto my chair Ruzek walks by and shoves a medium styrofoam cup into my open hand as he walks by.

"Hope you like mocha!" He calls as he continues over to Al and hands him a another cup. My shoulders shrug at the flavor. I could care less as long as its caffeine. Tipping my head back, I chug what tastes more like chocolate milk with some coffee mixed in. Half way through, though, I'm interrupted by Erin walking in and taking the cup right out of my hands.

"Thanks for the coffee Halstead." She says, smirking at my shocked face. Ruzek shouts indignantly from my left.

"Thank you Ruzek!" She says loudly. Adam harrumphs from behind his computer.

"Can I have my coffee back?" I whine imploringly. She grins and takes a sip.

"I didn't know you liked mocha." I narrow my eyes at her.

"It's coffee. I don't really care. Now can I have it back?" A Cheshire grin spreads across her face and she pointedly drops into her chair and takes another slow drink. My shoulders drop in defeat but before I can go to the break room to grab a mug Voight and Antonio walk in, the latter handing out files of our newest case. And so commences the description of your A-Typical case:

The crime: murder

The victims: Couple of hookers

The scene: a plain apartment in a dirty brick building that resides in the middle of gang territory

The motive: No idea

The suspects: None whatsoever.

The last part changed pretty quickly once we found the owner of the apartment has multiple priors including aggravated assault, possession of illegal substances and-you guessed it-murder. So our number one priority became tracking him down. And let me tell you, is _not_ the best at hiding. In fact, he probably wrote the book on how to be found.

I mean, C'mon dude. If you want a drink, at _least_ wash the blood of your latest victims off your hands before walking into a bar. Bartenders tend to notice these things. The problem is we don't quiet have a warrant for his arrest, seeing as Antonio pointed out, what looks like blood could have just been red dye. There's no evidence of him on the girls and everyone we interviewed said they hadn't seen him in a few days.

So that's why Intelligence is posted outside 'Mannys Margaritaville' at ten in the morning and also why I'm sitting in the passenger seat of my grey Buick, which I never get to drive.

Ever.

Finally after about two hours of sitting on our asses, Sir Chekov exits the bar on the phone with someone having a very heated conversation. Ruzek gets out of his car and does a casual little walk-by, informing us that he's said something about 'wanting to do it' and that he's 'not afraid of them'. I'm about to to suggest that we may be blown when he takes the initiative and pulls out a semi auto-magic hand gun. Chucking the phone away he opens fire on our car, putting large holes in our windshield. Lindsay and I duck down as quickly as possible, but that doesn't stop one of the bullets from grazing her arm. Yelping she tries to shrink further, without much success.

"A little backup please!" Erin yells into her radio. Right as she says that my head is whipped to the side by a piece of hot lead. There a small pause where she stares at me as I touch the small scrape it left, coating my fingers in blood. Lunging forward she unbuckles my seat belt and pulls me closer to the floor.

The bullets stop, but we don't dare raise our heads. It's not until we here a car door slam, followed by tires screeching that we dare peek above the dash board. A blue Chevy nova blows a red light at the end of the the street, the black escalade that contains the rest intelligence speeding after them. Erin slides back into her seat and slams the gas, our vehicle peeling away from the curb. The momentum presses me back into my seat with an "Oof!"

"Get up Halstead, we're driving." I glare at Erin while fumbling back into my glass-covered seat.

"You mean _you're_ driving." I mutter. A sharp turn sends me flying into my door then into dashboard then back into my seat as she hits the gas again. Eventually I work up the courage to look at the road...right as we blow a red light.

"Holy shit Erin, try not to kill...other people." I say as I watch two cars crash while trying to avoid us. We're about a block behind Voight when Antonio's voice comes over the radio, alerting all patrols of the make and model of our Russian friends.

"You lost him?!" I yell into the open air.

"We-"

I don't get to hear the rest of his response. I don't hear anything. I just glance out my window in time to see a blue Chevy barreling towards us and-

...

I only blackout for a second or two. Just for when who I assume to be our perp to hit the back end of our car, lopsidedly T-boning us. I am for when our car flips and we land upside down. In all honesty I can't figure out how our car flipped. I pretty sure we broke the laws of physics.

Anyway, so we're just in and upside down car, in the middle of a four way intersection, and we are both somehow still conscious. I say we're 'just in the car' because there's no way to really describe either of our positions. Neither of us had our seatbelts on so theres nothing holding us into our seats. That said neither of us have an easy time getting to the roof of the car. You know the one that's...on the pavement now. Through a lot of painful grunts and swearing we both make it to roof-now-floor of the car, falling rather clumsily onto many little shards of glass. Finally, we are breathing heavy, splayed out next to each other staring at the floor-now-roof that I speak.

"When I said…..don't kill...the other people...I kinda hoped...we... would also fall...into that category...of not being killed." My heaving chest and adrenaline make it hard to talk continuously. Erin apparently finds she has the same problem.

"Shut...up...jackass." She says, her sentence punctuated by gasps of air entering and exiting her lungs. I flash a weak smile and hold up a hand which she high-fives.

"Yaaay, we're alive. And….apparently not injured?" She dares to venture, checking herself over, before adding-

"Well, besides the baby bullet wound." I throw her a smirk which she returns.

"What? It's just a scratch. You don't call a paper cut a laceration. Therefor-Baby bullet wound." Lindsay's eyes roam me, obviously checking for injuries. Upon finding none her eyes flit up to my head. I watch her face twist in something like fear and concern. I grab her hand.

"It's just a baby." I whisper. She clenches her jaw.

"And it was an centimeter away from being lethal." She whispers right back.

"That's kinda what we do isn't it?" My partner makes what I've deemed as her 'scrunchy face', where she frowns, wrinkles her nose and squints all at the same time. She only makes it when I'm right.

"You're right." She huffs. Ha! See? Told yah.

"Let's get out of this thing." I mutter.

"Let's." Suddenly the window to my back shatters. I have this horrible moment where I think the car is collapsing on itself (even though that isn't really possible) before Olinski's head pops into view.

"You okay kid?" Nodding I grab Al's outstretched hand and Ruzek assists his partner in dragging me out of the totaled car. Slowly I stand, aware of how sore I'm gonna be tomorrow.

"Where were you guys?" I look across the car to see Antonio and Voight had helped Erin out in her side.

"Erin, he was shooting at us too." Voight responds to her question.

"How's that? He just stuffed _two_ assault rifles in his coat and no one noticed?!" She retorts.

"DC-9's." I correct, not even realizing what I'm saying until it's said. Everyone kinds stares at me.

"What?" Sarge asks in a unreadable tone.

"The guns he was using. They're Tec DC-9's. Low price, single action, and if you get a 9m, they have shorter barrels which mean you could easily conceal them in say, a coat pocket." I spout out the observation again not realizing what the issue with doing so is until…

"How do you know that?" Adam asks slowly. My eyes widen. How the hell do I respond to that?! Tell them that DC-9's make a distinct-ish sound and that the bullets were two small for anything bigger than a handheld and that I put two and two together? No, because then they'd ask me when I looked at the bullets, and how I know that sound, and am I sure because you really have no proof and who the fuck figures all that out while being shot at?

Tell the truth? Fuck no.

"I'm good like that." I say with a smile.

Smooooooth Halstead. Real smooth.

So to gage the room for reactions: Adam has disbelief written all over his face (which means he actually might let this go) Olinski has the simple 'eyebrow raise' (which means he actually knows how I figured it out and believes it) Antonio's face is just a '?' and while Erin is giving me her 'liar' face (she'll ask me about it later) Voight has his 'no bullshit but I can't prove you wrong' glare and face combo...which hopefully means he accepts that and won't waste time making me explain.

Pretty sucessful lie I think. Around then the fire department 51 and ambo arrive, saving me from any further interrogations. Voight makes me and Erin get checked out by the medics. Aside from a few cuts and bruises, we are "Miraculously unscathed" to quote one of paramedics. They begin to pack up their stuff when casey walks over.

"You guys okay?" He asks.

"Yeah, we're good. What's up?" I say, noticing his concerned expression. He points to a dark brick building on the corner of the intersection. The car that I assumed hit us is sitting with its tail end on the sidewalk outside it.

"One of my guys was doing a quick check of the building for any injured and...Well." Theres a slight pause where he looks at Erin and I like he's not sure he want's us to tell us the rest because of where it would lead us.

"You need to see this."

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**Did You like?**


	3. Shots

** I realized that I did it again and just didn't put A****twater in last chapter….or most of my stories really. I apologize to my Atwater lovers, I am going to make it a point to remember to put him in here. That said don't hate me for how it goes.**

**Shots- Imagine Dragons**

**Love you. Please don't kill me.**

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**Erin's P.O.V.**

We step past the crunched car and crumbling wall onto a marble floor. The building the car crashed into happens to be a bank, and a very nice one at that. It's not part of any commercial branch and after a talking to a couple clerks there, all the cash is still in the registers. I turn to Matt.

"So if there was no robbery, care to explain what was so interesting a car going into a wall?" I ask, more sarcastically than normal, but hey, I was just in a car accident, my partner came about three millimeters from death right in front of me, and we still have a extremely dangerous criminal on the loose. Sue me. Casey doesn't seem to mind though.

"The car isn't the problem. Neither is the money. At least, not out front. I couldn't tell you if they took anything in the back." He responds.

"Didn't look?" I say almost appreciatively.

"No." He says, his eyes down cast. "I couldn't stay in there." He exits the way we came, leaving us with those wonderful parting words. I exchange a glance with Jay, whom is a little to pale for my liking (I know, I know, I'm being a mother hen) before we enter a gated area that leads into a room that contains one of those giant bronze circular doors. The kind you put on a vault. The room is a clean white walled and granite floored simple square. The door is slightly ajar, the only thing out of place in the sterile room. It's massive and looming, giving off the feeling that it's hiding something horrible. We push open the door.

Horrible is an understatement. More like evil.I think as I resist the urge to vomit all over the crime scene. My hand grabs Jay's arm and squeezes. He doesn't move, his eyes slowly taking in the inside if the vault and all its gore. And I mean gore because there is blood everywhere. Splattered across the ceiling, sprayed on the walls, pooling on the floor. Then there's the source of it all, the body's. At least five, but I couldn't really tell you because the body aren't...whole.

That's right. There wasn't any singular complete body. Hands, arms, legs, and heads lay strewn across the once nice floor. My own hands shake as my stomach convulses, and I taste bile. However, while I have stayed glued to the spot, Halstead has stepping inside the vault, finding the spaces where not blood has tainted the tile. My hand drops to my side from where it was covering my mouth trying to stop me from throwing up.

"Jay-" I can't go any further, I'm too out of breath. He doesn't spare me a glance, just keeps his eyes glued on a wall I can't see. Slowly I forward onto the edge of the vault, so I'm standing in the doorway if you will. Peering precariously around the corner I can catch a glimpse of what he's staring at. On a far wall, written in blood are words not in the English language, but obviously have malicious intent.

The tremor in his hands is a majorly inaccurate representation of what he's really feeling. I can tell because I've worked with him long enough to know how he's the complete opposite when it comes to showing stress or emotion. When something horrible happens to me or I witness the aftermath, you can tell I'm not alright. It's on my face and in my body language. In other words, it's not extremely hard to tell when I'm screwed up.

Jay on the other hand, is actually very hard to read when he's upset. Maybe it's the military training, but I feel that it goes further into his past than that. You see he shuts down when faced with extreme mental stress, as a way to survive. Which you have to, when in warfare, it's the only real way to live and be able to have some part of yourself left when the battle's over.

Unfortunately this also means he won't deal with the pain. I will, possibly at some point in my life, stop having nightmares about this. I could conceivably, 'cope healthily'. But if I were to suppress this, try and push it down to escape the feelings that come with it...well, it wouldn't be pretty when those memories come back. When you stop being able to push those memories and emotions down, they all come back at once,stronger than ever. The longer you contain pressure, the more it builds, until it explodes, ten times the force.

So you could imagine why I was a tad concerned by the fact that my partners face was completely void of emotion. Actually I take that back. You could place horror and pure fear on his face, probably reflecting mine. However there's something more on his face, something underneath the internal turmoil barely showing on his face, I'm just too mixed up right now to figure it out.

There's another moment of silence, before he abruptly turns and crosses the room in leaps and bounds, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me out of view of the blood bath. We move left of the door, sliding down the wall, so there's no way to even glimpse the scene in there. Only there, once we are have successfully sat on the bottoms of the floor, do we allow ourselves to breath.

I lean forward a little and then there's a hand on my back that pushes me forward more until my head is between my knees. I had been hyperventilating without even realizing it. Jay's hand stays on my back the entire time, rubbing small circles with his thumb. Eventually, when my breathing goes back to something resembling normality I sit back against the wall and stare at the ceiling, tangling my hands in my hair. Halstead just drapes his hands across his bent knees and drops his head.

We stay this way for a couple minutes, trying to figure out a way to process what we've scene. Or, more like trying to think in general. That crime scene, that massacre in there wiped any average thoughts from my head, leaving me with just a simple shell shocked blank space where my normal thoughts used to exist. So while I stare at the ceiling, I don't really see it. I see that-that blood bath and I know that the only thing separating me from sitting in the middle of that is six inches of plaster and wood.

"They can't see this." Jay finally speaks, breaking the silence in the room.

"What?" I wince at the sound of my voice, wondering when it got so scratchy. Halstead lifts his head and looks at me.

"The team. I-I don't want them to see this." I must give him a strange look because he continues.

"Dont you think two mentally scarred team members is enough?"

I swallow past the boulder in my throat and consider his statement. All it takes is a simple picture of them combined with how I felt-how I feel and I find myself nodding in agreement. At that moment we hear footsteps and voices outside of the room, a clear indicator that the rest of Intelligence will be arriving very shortly. Jay motions to the vault door and together we stand and push it closed, hearing a satisfying 'clang' as it locks. Halstead looks at me.

" Get them out of this room. Make it clear that they don't have a choice." I nod again and we turn and start walking toward Antonio and Al who have just entered the room. By the time we reach them Ruzek and Atwater have joined them, but not for long. I put my hands up and point back towards the door.

"You need to leave." I try to say as forcefully as possible. There's some protest, 'What's' and 'why's' and 'What's going on's but Jay and I just keep talking, telling them to turn around and half ushering with our hands. At one point Adam tries to stop and Jay gets pissed off. Kinda entertaining.

"Why can't we go in there?!" Ruzek yelled.

"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY, JUST MOVE!" Jay had roared.

Everybody moved pretty quickly after that. Finally we were back out in the main room, everyone stared at us like we were insane.

"What the hell was that?!" Voight says, clearly more than annoyed. I exchange a look with Jay. He nods then turns back to our boss.

"Do you trust us?" He asks in a quiet voice. The team is taken aback, as am I. Guess that nod meant something different to him. The silence stretches as Voight tries to figure out where Halstead is going with this or...is he hesitating? Does he really have to think this over?! Anger bubbles in my stomach at Voights hesitation. Halstead has been in intelligence almost as long as I have and our boss still can't see it in him to trust my partner. In-fucking-believable. Jay apparently gets just as annoyed with the think session everyone's having because he repeats himself, a snarl at the edge of tone.

"Do. You. Trust. Us?" He says through gritted teeth. Finally Hank answers.

"Yes." The rest of the team nods in agreement.

"Then you will trust me when I say that you do not need to see what's in there, at least not right now. And if you can't let this go, then I will go back in there and close the vault so you will be physically unable to enter. Am I clear?"

Jay speaks in a hard voice, cold, the only emotion evident is anger.. Everyone does a slow nod, shooting questioning looks at me but, not seeing anything to explain this on my face, return their gazes back to Halstead or each other. Still I fail to see how he will end this. The shock that Jay inflicted is keeping them quiet, but once that wears off, we are going to have a bunch very angry coworkers demanding answers. We turn and start to leave.

"They're not done with us." I mutter to him.

"I know." He reply's through gritted teeth before speeding up his steps and approaching truck company, whom are packing up.

"Hey Casey! Can we get a ride back to the precinct? We're only like three miles from here."

"Yeah sure man. Hop in the back." Matt responds. I throw him a smile as I climb in, excepting Otis's hand and jumping up into the seat.

"Is Voight okay with this?" Gabby asks as Cruz starts us on our way.

"I could care less." I say under my breath, still fuming from his evident lack of trust in Halstead and I. Jay smirks then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Holding it with two finger he raises it up to eye level so we can all marvel at the perfect 'c' it makes. The thing is destroyed. He looks at gabby.

"Oh yeah. He's totally cool with it." Jay says sarcastically. Reluctantly I try my phone. It turns on, but then claims 'low battery' and shuts off.

"Guess he's gonna have to be." Otis chimes in.

We arrive at the precinct shortly thereafter. Thanking Casey for the ride, he wishes us good luck, then we climb out and travel up the stairs into the precinct. Platt is on the phone with someone and I guess it's our boss because as we walk by she says "yeah they just walked in." Jay and I speed up, hoping to get up the stairs before she hangs up, but to no avail.

"Hey you two!" Wincing we turn and slowly walk back towards her. Putting on my most innocent smile I'm the first to speak to Platt.

"Yes?" I say sweetly.

"Don't even try it. That was your Sergeant. He asked me to remind you that the fire department is just that. They are not a taxi service." Her stern voice makes any pretense I had of being nice fall away.

"Way to stick it to the man." Her words make both me and Jay stare at her in surprise.

"Just don't let it happen again." Nodding we turn and start to head to the stairs leading up when she speaks again.

"Oh and Jay?" He whirls around. She sticks out a hand with a white envelope in it.

"This came for you." He takes it from her hand, but Jay doesn't move from his spot. He just stares at the piece of mail, white as a ghost.

"Problem Detective?" Platt says raising an eyebrow at him. His head snaps up and he stares at her, mouth moving but not forming words. I rejoin him. My presence seems to ground him enough to mumble "No problem sarge." He offers a wane smile which she returns, before he goes up the stairs to intelligence. I would have followed but Platt gave a me look that clearly said stay.

"What's up?" She stops doing her paperwork for the first time since we walked to look at me.

"You don't tell anyone this." I nod.

"That letter is from the military." I feel the blood drain from my face. Platt just glares.

"Relax momma bear. He's not going back. I checked." I tilt my head.

"You read Jays mail?!" I stage whisper. Trudy just puts her face closer to mine.

"Don't you think that if Jay was going back to the army, that it might be a good idea for Voight to know first?"

"What the hell would Voight be able to do about it?!"

"Not much, but at least he would know so he could talk to Jay about. Knowing Halstead he'd just up and leave. Anyway he's not going back so it doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't tell the rest of your little team, and you act as though you don't know. Capesh?"

I stare at her for a moment, totally lost.

"Yah, okay." I pause in my response. "Wait, did you say he would just leave?" I ask, recalling her earlier remark. Platt just stares at me incredulously.

"Seriously? That's what you're hinging on?!" I nod, mouth agape. Would he really just leave?

"Erin, if Jay Halstead were to be called back to the Rangers, he would be scared shitless of telling you guys, so he would just put it off until he was already on the plane, then just say 'oopsies, knew I forgot something.' I pause for a moment, offering a 'huh' face when I realize, shes probably right.

"And if you don't get upstairs, he's going to know that you know. Now, go!"

Slapping my hand on the desk, I turn and scuttle up to intelligence, just as Voight and the rest of the team walk in.

* * *

**Voight's P.O.V.**

Angry does not acuratly describe my mood as I walk into the main lobby. It's more like an annoyed fury. A non official suspect walks out of a bar, shoots at my team, almost kills one of them, hit and flips a car carrying my surrogate daughter and her partner, then proceeds to get away. AND Erin and Jay just decided that they run the team and don't need to notify the rest of the team when they leave a scene.

They are in soooooo much trouble.

It must be written all over my face because Platt just gives me a look before beckoning me to her desk.

"Go easy on your detective, alright? Today hasn't been the best day."

"Yeah, no shit. Doesn't give them an excuse to undermine my authority." I growl the response, unintentionally taking out some of my anger on her.

"I said detective, singular. Listen to me for once, okay? Don't be super hard on him."

"Why not?" I question, seeing abosoluty no reason not to go upstairs and rip them a new one.

"He got a letter from the United States Ranger Corp. today." She tells me like one would tell someone else tha it was going to rain later today.

I stare at her for a moment, my fury instantly redirects itself toward the new target-and then bounces it's way onto myself as I realize there's nothing I can do about it.

I promised to protect my team and now-

"Relax, cupcake. I told Erin and I'm telling you. He's not going back. But that still doesn't mean it's good news."

I pause.

"How do you know he's not-" I raise my eyebrows, Then lower my voice.

"You read Halsteads mail?!" She rolls her eyes.

"The resemblance between you and Erin is uncanny. Yeah, I do. And for this exact reason. Now if I've heard right, you have a angry Russian to go catch?" Nodding I turn and make my exit.

Once upstairs, I pause to stare at the small group gathered around Jay's desk. Ruzek is crouched down trying to pick the lock on one of the drawers, Atwater is down next to him trying to help and Antonio is just standing and watching, laughing at their failur to get it open. I shoot a glance at Erin, who's busy on the phone. She just rolls her eyes then raise her hand up in simple gesture that clearly says 'wasn't my idea'.

"Where Halstead?" I ask quietly as I walk to her desk. She puts a hand on the bottom of the phone but keeps the speaker part to her ear.

"Went outside, said he needed some air." She whispers back, however the look on her face tells me that she's worried about him. Sighing, I'm about to tell the team to get back to work, but he beats me to the punch.

"What are you doing?" Ruzek stands up so fast he almost falls over, turning to stare at Halstead with complete surprise written on his face.

"Oh, you know, we're just, uh..." Jay raises an eyebrow, not moving from his position, leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed. A picture of amusement as he watches Adam stumble over himself trying to find an excuse. Keven, who stood more slowly, offers one.

"Oh you know, we just checking to make sure your locks work. Gotta have all the desks in prime condition."

Jay tilts his head slightly in mock surprise before replying.

"Oh? And are all the other desks getting their locks checked too?" Adam has edged his way around the desk so now he stands next to Antonio, with a clear line of escape.

"Uhhhh...yeah. Yes! Absolutely. Every desk!" Jay pushes off the wall and stands in front of the two, drawing himself to full height, feet slightly apart, hands balled into fists at his side. Atwater actually backs up a tiny step.

"You checking them with a clothespin and a paper clip?" His eyes are hard and guarded, adding to the intimidation factor. Adam opens and closes his mouth a couple times ,before turning to Atwater.

"Oh my gosh, you know what we are going to be late! Sorry Jay we gotta go...uh, somewhere." To Atwaters credit he goes with it, not stopping for a second, while ushering Ruzek toward the stairs and away from Jay's hard glare.

"Yeah, uh, it's real important we get there on time, so we gotta go. Talk to you later Halstead!" He calls over his shoulder before rushing down the stairs, hot on Adams heels. Jay looks at Antonio, who just raises his hands.

"Wasn't me." Is all he says before returning to his desk. Jay just shakes his head before moving to return to his. I call him back.

"My office." I nod to Erin as she hangs up the phone. She moves with Jay then closes the door once she enters. There silence for a moment as I simply look at them. Jay catches my eye but quickly looks to the floor. I open my mouth to say something but Lindsay interrupts.

"It wasn't his fault!" She blurts out. "Look both out phones were dead and we just wanted to get out of there! If you saw it you'd-" she cuts herself off as she realizes what she said. Any pretense of not going hard on the two disappear instantly.

"No I didn't see it, I was to busy being pushed out of the crime scene BY MY OWN TEAM!" Lindsay flinches back at my yell, but keeps talking.

"Voight we just-"

"No! Enough! You threatened your own team over a freckin' crime scene! And you!" I found on Halstead, my feet carrying me forward until I'm right in front of him.

"You DARE challenge me?! You have a problem, you tell me in private, not airing it out in front of the entire team! Understand!?" Halstead does nothing more than stare at me, eyes wide.

"Voight, we had to, it was the only way to keep you from-"

"FROM WHAT?!" I roar, turning back to Erin. "Doing our jobs?!"

She glares at me, her own temper rising.

"No! You didn't need to see that okay?! It was an 'in the moment' thing!"

"That wasn't your decision to make in the first place! You made it seem like we couldn't do our jobs, Erin!" Lindsay opens her mouth again to say something, but I am tired of hearing her trying to explain this.

"NO! No more! I'm done with your excuses Erin! Just because you two can't handle a little bit of gore and violence, doesn't mean the rest of us can't either!" I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth. Lindsay looks at me, shock painted on her face and Jay takes a small step back. I want to apologize, but suddenly Erin is screaming at me and I'm to caught up in the moment to stop.

"HOW DARE YOU! YOU KNOW WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH AND YOU DARE SAY THAT 'I CANT HANDLE IT'?! HALSTEAD'S BEEN THROUGH TWENTY TIMES WORSE THAN YOU OVER SEA'S AND YOU DARE SAY THAT HE CANT HANDLE IT EITHER?!" Her rage washes over the small space, the air turning hot and thick with our combines anger. Not once did she lower her voice and I scream right back.

"YOUR DAMN RIGHT I DID! TWO EXPERIENCED DETECTIVES CANT HANDLE A LITTLE BLOOD AND GORE MAKES ME WONDER JUST HOW MUCH YOU'VE REALLY SEEN!"

"OH YEAH RIGHT, BECAUSE HALSTEAD DIDN'T SEE ALL THE TRUE SIGHTS WHILE HE WAS FIGHTING A DAMN WAR!"

"THEN HE CAN GO BACK!"

With a sharp crack my face is thrown sideways and pain slices across my cheek as Erin's hand falls back to her side. No one moves. The only sound is heavy breathing when I finally look up at Lindsay. Tears stream down her face and her hands tremble.

"I'll be at my desk if you need me, Sargent." Her voice wavers and she just about sprints from the office, leaving just me and Halstead who hasn't said a word the entire time. He too, turns to leave but pauses, not quite facing me or anything really, more like stairs at the floor.

"CSU finished up five minutes ago. You'll have the crime scene photos within the hour." He says quietly before exiting and closing the door Erin left open.

Leaving me alone to realize what I've done.

* * *

**Well that was...climactic. So, uh, I hope you guys really enjoyed this one. As you know it took me a while to get it up. The reason behind that being I wrote, rewrote, then rewrote again, each time making major changes to it. I'm still not super happy but hey. My beta said its good. And I aaaaalways listen to da beta. :D thanks bubbly. Ur awesome.**

**Oh yes and I must respond to my call out-recently a new author of the cpd fandom popped up and told all her followers to go read my stuff. Therefor-**

**A HUGE THANK YOU to ms. Athena Jackson for the mention. If you guys haven't read her story I strongly suggest you do. It's pure Jay whump (A to Z actually) and its reeeeally good!**

**REVIEWREVIEWREVIEWREVIEW- small side not here: I have a fav author of mine recently reminded of why reviews are so important- they keep stories going. They keep us authors updating. But really, when we see a review, it lets us know people actually want to read more of our stuff. (Most authors have an identity crisis in that we think our work is shit)**

**Reviews keep us writing. So please-send some love by clicking that review button. :)**


	4. Knock Knock Knockin' On Heaven Door

**Shall we?**

**Knock Knock Knockin' On Heaven's Door- Raigns Version**

**Warning: lot of blood and swearing in this one.**

* * *

**P.O.V. -?**

"So He's really still a detective?" Jess whispers to me, her voice instantly picked up by the three two year old in front of me. I roll my eyes as Adams, Jordan, and Grayson all turn and pop their heads up on top of their seats.

"Yeah Lieutenant, is he?"

"No way. He can't do undercover to save his life!" Adams answer Jordan's question for her and before I can do anything, the three of them are argueing.

"Oh yeah, except _every time he's had to do undercover." _Jordan slings back.

"Besides isn't he'd get too bored."

"Nu-Uh! He can-"

"Hey!" I get a couple of dirty looks from the people across from me as I raise my voice to get them to stop. Lowering it again I set my face with one of serious annoyment. Jess calls it 'the mom face.'

"What are you, 5? Jesus christ, guys. Yes, he's still a cop, in Chicago, working with intelligence. Officially he's running the longest undercover op in Ranger history and given what he does...no I don't think he's that bored. Now sit!" I sigh, rubbing a hand down my face. This is our third flight today and while it's our last it's also the longest. Plus, I'm not a big plane person. To easy of a target.

Unfortunately the there habaneros do not sit and in fact catch my worry. Adams narrows his eyes.

"She's worried."

"Yep."

"Most definitely." I glare at them as Jordan and Greyson respond seconds from each other.

I raise my eyebrows, staring incredulously at them.

"And she's mad." Greyson adds. My look changes to a murderous glare.

"Sitting down." Jordan yelps, dragging the two boys down with her. I give a low growl as Adams mutters something under his breath. I huff, then start to fiddle with my backpack, trying to find my headphones while listening to the conversation in front of me.

Greyson, Jordan and Adams engaging in some argument about how and where to launch the surprise once we land. It's funny almost, because he specifically told them not to just show up when he's with his team, as intelligence doesn't really know about us. Yet both of Jordan and Adams have apparently decided to include the team in one way or another.

Basically defying their second Lieutenants orders just because they know he won't get pissed off. Smart really, as he'd be to happy at seeing us to really get too annoyed. The only problem being we actually have to _do other things_ before we can meet up with him.

Like say, Set up home base, safe houses, reintegrate and update all our security, contact every insider source we have to find out what exactly has been going on concerning gangs and such. Basically completely re-establish our presence in Chicago.

You know. Small stuff.

Plus, I'd like to have a conversation with Voight and his superiors before we ambush him in front of his team. And Erin. I'd like to actually meet Erin in person, she of all people would be able to accurately tell me how my brother is doing. After all, she seems to be the only person who not only cares for him, but also actually _understands _him.

Well, as much as can be expected. She has no idea about his past, or his time in Afghanistan. As he puts it-"she only knows the 'gentle' side of me." To which I simply replied that he doesn't have a gentle side, which led to another argument between us.

"Does Sam know about Maddie?" Jess asks suddenly. I nod, remembering both receiving the news and having to relay it to Toronto. Maddie Callahan, Braddock's estranged daughter, left Canada and took her mother's maiden name, opting to be closer to her would be uncle than stay with her parents. Yeah, _that _went over well, especially after Sam found out she was shot.

It was a very interesting phone conversation.

I glance at my phone. Eleven thirty, Chicago time. I smile wryly, thinking about how he's probably debating with Lindsay on whether or not to get lunch. She'll say it's too early, he'll argue that they aren't busy at the moment. He will lose, then later when they are starving they'll be in the middle of discussing a case, or gearing up for a take down. He'll say 'I told you so', she'll be annoyed but promise to buy a round so long as he can precure them something to eat.

I only know this because it literally happens every other fucking day with those two. They need to grow a pair and get a chapel already. I mean, C'mon. They act like a married couple, they might as well buy the ring and _be_ a married couple.

"-chel! Hey, lieutenant you listening?!" A pair of fingers snapping in front of my eyes accompanies the voice. I jerk my head back, blinking hard a couple of times before looking to Jess, who stares back at me.

"Hmm?" I ask. Her incredulous face turns to one of worry. Whipping her head back around she smiles at a flight attendant with a tray.

"Um, we're all set, thank you." The lady purses her lips and nods, clearly trying not to show her annoyance. Shrugging, I lean backward, finally tug out my headphones, attempting to untangle them. I don't even have to look up, I can feel Jessica staring at me, even as I click my earbuds into my phone.

"Can I help you?" I murmur, pushing one side of the listening device into my right ear.

"You're really worried about him aren't you?" I tap my phone a couple times, opening my music while putting in my other headphone. Choosing not to respond, I opt for simply glancing at my tech master of a team mate. Her eyes widen, flicking down to my phone then back to my face, but she doesn't make any other action to question me, just turning and staring her own troubled gaze at the back of her seat.

I hit play, staring out the tiny window on my side to gaze at the dark ocean below as Moby's 'Extreme Ways' starts to sing to my ears. I really should sleep, I know, by as I said before I don't like planes. Besides I'm too wound up to sleep. I _am _worried about my second in command, Jess wasn't wrong about that. We grew up together, saw the same shit hit the fan and was there to clean up the mess.

I haven't seen him in four years, so naturally one would think my worry stems from the fact that he's probably a different person. I can only assume that's what the rest of my team thinks I'm worried about. It's not.

For the longest time, ever since I can really remember, I've always known. Even when we were kids. It's not really a complete idea of what or where, but more like this feeling. It doesn't settle in my gut or make me feel sick, it just...kinda puts me off. I'm always on edge, I'll second guess myself and I can't concentrate on anything because I'm lost in my own head. It doesn't happen often but when it does me, along with everyone else on my team notices.

Which explains the multiple sets of eyes peeking at me between on the seat. The ones I choose to ignore, because I'm too busy trying to forget the reason why I've always got this feeling in the first place.

Jay Halstead is in trouble, and I'm to far away to stop it.

* * *

**Jay's P.O.V.**

"We should have gotten lunch."

"Wha-okay it was way too early! I wasn't even hungry!"

"Bet you're hungry now..."

"Oh shut up." I smile. She always does that when I'm right, tries to end the conversation. Normally I wouldn't let it go, but I'm just a tad angry from an earlier conversation between Erin and our boss. And still in shock from the outcome of that, as well as the events leading up to it. Not to mention the all around soreness from our little 'accident' and the tiredness that comes after an adrenaline dump.

So naturally our _wonderful _boss decided that we don't need to go home because we are perfectly capable of sitting in the car for two hours while we wait for him to get to our location. Our location being an abandoned warehouse that was apparently remodeled by a serious gang with ties in Chicago going as far back as the mafia.

I guess gruesome blood messages using innocent people is a specialty of theirs. We were recommend by just about every beat cop we met going out to be careful. Apparently they have a reputation.

Moral of the story being I can't even begin to sort out all my emotions and thoughts on the subjects so I end up forcing myself to focus on the one thing that I _can_ think about.

My inability to sit still.

Okay, so have you ever been nervous? Like stupidly excessively nervous? To the point that you can feel your heart racing, the blood pounding through your body, so hard you can feel it in every cell and every breath? You know what I'm talking about, right? The butterfly's in your stomach feel more like a stampede of elephants, energy sizzles under your skin and little shots of adrenaline fizzle in your fingers and feet, making it impossible for you to sit still.

"Will you stop moving the damn car?!"

My partner in copness, the holy Erin Lindsay, knows all about my nervousness. Excessive is an understatement. I've been squirming in my seat for the last two hours. Why? Well, because there is this nice, pristine white envelope sitting in my desk right now with the United States Army symbol stamped on the front. Return address Camp Pendleton. And I haven't read it yet.

Yeah, see that's a nerve racking thing for someone like me. Not because I could be going back. No, that's never going to happen. Which makes that letter infinitely more worrisome.

I do suppose it be them coming home. I mean, it's almost been four years right? But why would you send a letter? Wouldn't one of them have called? Emailed? Something less dramatic than a letter that is the same whether it's a recall or a death notification?

I guess I should explain that last one.

You see they won't ever send me back to Afganistan because they sent me _home._ My team, probably the army's most valuable black op. team, had their contracts renewed. Another four years, that I would've served except for some...unfortunate occurrences. So given the work we do-the work I _did_\- it is far more likely I'll be planning a funeral than a 'Welcome back' party. And if my team is dead...if _any _of them are dead...Well, knowing the feelings I get just from the _thought_ of that, if it were true, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to handle it. Don't get me wrong, I like intelligence but I love O7R. They're my family. My _real_ family.

O7R, by the way, stands for Original Seven Rangers. It's the name of our team. Yes, I understand the fact that the Ranger academy has been around for a lot longer than I have, but I'm not talking about those Rangers, the ones on paper. I'm talking about the Rangers the Gov. d_oesn't _recognize. The ones that redefined the term "black-op."

"Jay! Snap out of it!" A hand roughly grips my shoulder, rudely jolting me out of my thoughts. I start, looking around wildly for a threat, but only finding Lindsay staring at me concerned.

"Hmm?" I say, wide eyed. She stares at me.

"What's up?" I repeat.

"Are you okay? I said your name like five times. You looked catatonic." I narrow my eyes.

"You're exaggerating."

"Noooooo. I wasn't. You were staring at nothing, still as a rock after almost two hours of constant moving, and you're still white as sheet." She looks at me seriously.

"I'm fine." She smirks.

"Do you know what 'fine' stands for?" I glare at her.

"Shut up."

"Hey, You're the one who taught me that."

"You weren't supposed to use it." I mutter. She throws me an annoyed look, although I can see worry and concern, simmering right below the surface of her beautiful face.

"We can go. Voight's here." The loathing in her voice when she says her boss's name suprises me, but then she's got a pretty good reason. I suppose I have a better one, however at the moment, I don't feel real anger toward him. Just a kind of detached disrespect.

"Why didn't you say so?" My eagerness to exit the car returns.

"That's what I was trying to get your attention for, genius." Nodding I open the door and start to get out.

"Jay?" Erin calls as I stand in the open air.

"Yah?"

"Listen-" Her voice wavers for a moment and she studies the steering wheel for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to continue her sentence.

"-look, if you need to talk, about _anything_, I'm here okay?" I shoot her a questioning look. She only blinks.

"I know the letter was from the Rangers." I lean on the open door, staring at her. Trying to figure out exactly how she managed that one, seeing as I shoved that thing in my drawer that I then locked before going outside this morning. And seeing as Adam and Kev never managed to open it...

"Um, How exactly do you know that?" Her eyes widen as she notices her mistake. Before she can respond I ask a better question.

"And why exactly are you not worried about me having to go back?" She opens her mouth to backtrack I assume when the realization hits.

"Because you already knew that I wasn't." Surprises flashes in her eyes and she tries to back peddle.

"No, I just-are you _laughing?!" _She exclaims, staring incredulously at me as I try desperately to cover my mouth with my hands, failing miserably to hide my silent chuckles. I close the door, turning away from car and walking towards the rest of our entourage.

"JAY HALSTEAD!" Her angry yell just makes me laugh harder, the team giving us odd looks. I stop as a small hand grabs my wrist and spins me around. Erin stands there face flushed with anger.

"What the hell?! How did you-" I grin, just getting over the laughter.

"Was it you? Or Platt?" She rolls her eyes, a sigh escaping her mouth as she finally drops all pretenses of denying it.

"Platt. And I'm pretty sure she told Voight too." The grin slips from my mouth, anger pushing all lightness from the conversation.

"_What?"_ I grind out through my now clenched teeth. Erin shoots me an odd look, so I continue.

"He knew that I had just gotten that from the military, knew it could and _probably is_ a death notification and he _still_ had the _audacity _to say that about me?!" Lindsay narrows her eyes, catching onto some of my anger. I guess that hadn't occurred to her either.

"Apparently so." She snarls, briskly walking past me to the rest of the team. I follow.

Intelligence is clustered around the open trunk of the black escalade we managed to turn into an official police vehicle after a bust some while ago. I manage to squirm past Ruzek and Dawson to grab one of the long guns. (They're actually M4A1's, but Voight named them long guns, and nobody else really knows what they are.) I shove a magazine into the bottom, hearing the click as the magazine catch does its job. Pulling back the control bolt, I watch in satisfaction as a bullet slides smoothly into the chamber. I attach the strap, wrapping it over my head and under my left shoulder, adjusting it so that the strap doesn't interfere with the guns normal position.

"We ready?" Voight's gruff voice sounds behind us. Resentment instantly surges in my gut, but I manage to keep my face placid, not really wanting to get into it again. Erin on the other hand has no problem letting her rage be known, staring straight at him as she loads her gun then replying in a hard voice.

"Absolutely _Sargent._" Her eyes flick over him, then offering nothing more but a cruel look she turn and pushes past a shocked Antonio and a confused looking Ruzek. I simply gaze at him for a moment, reminding myself that he is in fact my boss, before shrugging and following my partner. We pull our makeshift face masks (they're really just pieces of black cloth tied around our necks) up over our nose and ready our guns, switching the safety off and pulling them up to be nearly perpendicular with our chests.

We share a glance, then settle into our own little mindset reserved for high risk situations. The rest of the team come up behind us, forming two breach lines, Dawson's hand on my shoulder, Ruzek's hand on Erin's. I count down on my fingers then Atwater comes around and shoots through the lock with the gage.

Immediately I lower my gun and slam my shoulder into the door, paying no attention to it as it bounces off the wall. Our two lines shift slightly to continue down the narrow hall that greets us as we enter.

It's dimly light and musty, but despite our loud entrance, no one makes themselves known to us. Our boots echo loudly against the concrete floors and walls as we make it to the end of the hall. There's a door to the left that opens into a warehouse/garage thingy. The lights are on so it's not hard to see it's empty. Literally empty, no shelves or anything. Not even a car. Dawson raises his gun to the little window on the door anyway, checking the walls parallel to the door. He nods to us.

Erin wastes no time, swinging her gun around, muzzle dipping to the floor as she passes each warm body with her. She raises it again to aim at the second door on the right. Gently Al tests the push bar. It opens the door without a sound, revealing a concrete stairwell, that the team instantly fills. We start to climb to the first level and on the outside of the door is an old map of the building.

"Sarg. there's like five floors in this place." Adam whispers. Al shoots a glare at him for breaking the silence. I glance at the large painted '1' on the wall, while moving my hands. Voight nods, and we slip into more groups, Olinski and Ruzek staying to cover the first floor, the rest of us moving upward. Voight splits with Atwater on the second floor, telling us that they'll join up when they can.

We get all the way to the fourth floor, Dawson having gone to the third on his lonesome, when it starts. Gunshots echo up the stairwell from lower floors, and then suddenly bullets are pinging on the metal hand rails near us. The silence is broken and people start yelling, myself included.

"Go, go, go!" I yell, pushing Erin up the stairs, knowing full well that if we get stuck on these stairs it will quickly become a kill box, one that we won't be walking out of. She runs up to the fourth floor level, firing a couple shots upward. The bullets stop and we watch as a body falls past us, both of us cringing at the sound of it hitting the bottom.

We stare at the door to level four, our guns raised.

"What do you wanna do?" I swallow. More shots echo from down stairs, followed by more yelling.

"Go. I got this." She glances at me, seemingly reluctant to leave.

"Go, Erin they need your help. Dawson's doing his floor alone anyway, go help them on the second or first so they can get up here quicker." She nods.

"And the fifth floor?"

"Not a floor really, just the roof. Ruzek was slightly exaggerating." Erin gives me a look.

"Be careful Jay."

"Never." She rolls her eyes, offering nothing more than an 'ugh' before leaving, sprinting down the stairs. I take deep breath, readjusting my weapon and trying to recall everything I know about clearing a house alone. Most it adds up to the fact that if there's a lot of people in there, I'm screwed.

The door is different than the others, instead of a large metal push bar, there's only a simple locked door handle, which a bullet quickly takes care of. Instantly I'm pushing my way inside, reciting Sam's old motto about speed. See what a lot of people don't know, is that your speed when clearing a space should be greatly related to the amount of people you have with you who know what you're doing.

So for example if I had another person with me, we would go considerably slower than we would with say, ten.

'_Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and fast is lethal.'_ That's the SRU motto, I guess if they were to have one. Or maybe just team ones. The whole point of the saying is a good one, even as I clear room after room, Shining flashlights in closets, peeking around corners and double checking behind me every thirty seconds. It's pretty simple, the smoother your are, the more _comfortable _and _confident _you are, the easier it is to move and shoot efficiently. When you're alone, trying to clear an area with a near definite threat, you do not hesitate, you do not think.

You have to just...shoot.

I've reached what I think is the last hallway. I've successfully cleared and moved across the entire left half of the floor without meeting anybody. Which is good, but also kinda scary, seeing as I can still hear gunshots from downstairs. So either every bad guy in this building is forbidden from the fourth floor or they are hiding waiting for me.

Which sucks. Because I really hate surprises. Especially when they happen to be guys with guns and intent to kill.

That's why corners _also _suck. I mean C'mon, what better way to get the jump on somebody than to wait on the other side of a corner with the element of surprise on your side? So I'm at the end of this hallway, huge, industrial Windows to my left, a plain white wall to my right, and fucking corner a few feet in front of me. I am assuming that corner just leads to another hallway, seeing as you have to turn right, there's nowhere else to go, no doors or stairs of anything. I've just steeled my nerve to travel forward more and get this over with when Voight decides to kill me.

Or, he would have if there had been anybody on the other side of the wall to hear his voice come through the coms. I had instantly dropped into a crouch, gun pointed upward, ready for the first person to come around the corner. When nothing happens, I jump on the radio, silencing the one on my shoulder that blared out his voice, as well as dispatches response. I have no idea what he called for, but if it's backup, I'm going to kill him.

"Guys, what the fuck!" I whisper-yell into the com in my ear.

"Halstead! What the _hell_ is the matter with you?!" Anger surges through me as Voight screams at me. My patience with him is currently tied to amount of respect I have for him, which at the moment, is at an all time low.

"What's the matter with me?! How about _you?!_ We can't keep everything in house Voight, we needed backup to go into this building." There an audible pause, where I can almost feel the shock from the team after I called him out. Well. Everyone except Erin, who manages to respond to me that Hank did, just in fact call for swat, (with a great amount of satisfaction I might add) before my boss snarls at me. Although not the words I expect to hear.

"_Where the hell are you?! _" I don't know why but this just fuels the rage over his words that I didn't even know I had.

"Oh, are _disappointed _that I'm still _here_ instead of back in Afghanistan!?" I spit out the words, care for my job disappearing. Care for anything really, because I said it so loud that anyone on the floor could have heard me. When he doesn't respond, I continue my little attack.

"I'm clearing my floor, Voight, I'm doing it _alone_. Because _you _were too proud to admit that maybe, just maybe we are in over heads. So I'm _sorry_ if this isn't what _you_ wanted, but it's what I'm doing." It's true and he knows it. He doesn't want to admit that intelligence in all of our glory and whatever, would actually need help. That's why he was so pissed at Lindsay and I, especially after she said we didn't think the team could handle it. Intelligence is supposed to be able to do anything. Except we can't.

Then once everyone saw the crime scene photos...it started to be one clear how heavy this case is. Nobody talked while we were suiting up, it felt like nobody even breathed. All we got were these side glances from the rest of the the team, and when Voight walked in, it got to the point where you could have made a tension sandwich.

"You're clearing a floor _alone?!"_Ruzek interrupts our little battle of words.

"I'm trying to but you won't _shut up!" _ I'm seriously considering the possibility there is no one on this floor, because honestly they should've come at me by now.

"Stand down, Halstead stand down!" The boss is back.

"I can do this Voight."

"You know the rules, Halstead! You can't-" I rip the earpiece out, letting it fall to the floor not really caring where it lands. Standing I think I can hear something now, a noise from somewhere in my vicinity and I'm sure I would have contemplated it more except that suddenly I'm flying through the the air, then slamming down on my back, a huge weight deciding to press itself on my chest. The gun is ripped from my numb fingers, the strap catching around my neck. Fear shoots through me as he tugs the strap again, obviously trying to get the gun farther away from me, although all he's doing is choking me with my own fucking gun.

Twisting I manage to slip my hand up and pull the strap off myself, since this idiot has no idea what he's doing. I know because the second the weapon is out of the picture, he tries choking me with his own two hands, not taking into regards my sidearm, or the knife I have strapped to my back under my shirt.

The choking thing is getting quite annoying though. My hand instinctively reaches for my knife, but forgets that I hid it from the team, not shoving it at its rightful place of the outside of my right thigh. The first time I did that in front if the team I got so much shit for it I didn't bother with it again, however I figured with these guys, I'd need it.

Panic starts to take over as the man presses harder on my throat, bright colors bursting before my eye in a spectacular supernova of lights. Choosing instead for plan b, my left hand claws it's way down my legs, dragging my gun free of its holster simultaneously flicker the safety off and pulling back the hammer, cocking the gun. The man snarls as I knee him in the groin, making his hands loosen slightly.

I slam the muzzle of the gun into his temple, firing. A warm sticky spray of blood and brain matter coats my face. Breathing heavy, I lie there for a moment, the man's dead body limp on top of mine. It isn't until he blood from the hole in his head starts to drip onto mine do I move, grunting as I push him off. My hands shake slightly as I grab my gun. I close my eyes and breathe through my mouth.

_No Halstead, you can't do this, you can't lose it, not right now._

Opening my eyes I force myself to calm, blaming the shakiness on adrenaline. I can hear a metal door closing, followed by footsteps, and lots of them. I check my gun, unclipping the strap, then wrapping it around my hand, forming a fist around the loop created there. With my other hand I pull the knife from my back, sliding it up my sleeve, the top pointing outward towards my palm. I grip the gun in the same hand, finger on the trigger. I take a deep breathe. And then I run.

Charging forward, I raise the gun, not even bothering to look where I'm aiming. I start firing as I reach the wall straight in front of me, jumping and kicking off the wall so hard I cross diagonally into the other hallway, still firing until I hit the wall. Which, mind you, is officially the coolest way I've ever rounded a corner before.

Now comes the part of this I would never do around the team. They don't know my background, both what happened in the war and to me on the streets. I intend to keep it that way. It's almost ironic too, because when I first learned how to fight multiple people at the same time, I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world.

...

_"Are you kidding me?! Three people?!" I stare incredulously at Rachel, who merely raises her eyebrows in amusement. _

_"What's so bad about that?" She asks, pushing off the wall she was leaning against. We snuck into the old gym a couple of hours ago, the dusty boxing ring still standing in the middle. It's kind of been our unofficial hide out since we left Miami and moved to Chicago. The huge warehouse was basically a failed investment, it was only really bought and had equipment shoved in here, barely open for a week before the owners health failed. He hadn't put it in his will yet, so it went to the city that wanted nothing to do with an abandoned storage unit on the south side where crime was highest._

_Which left this a great place to hang out. You know. When we weren't getting our asses kicked by Rachel as she tries to teach us how to fight. Her teaching style brings new meaning to the phrase 'trial by fire'._

_Without so much as an explanation she gives us a partner and has us start practicing one on one. Clean. No weapons, just hands. While we do her version of a 'warm up' she talks._

_..._

My eyes scan the hallway.

"_First rule to follow when fighting against multiple assailants. Count. Analyze every person, weapons, stance, leaders and followers. Are they organized? Do they know hand to hand? Or do they rely solely on their guns to take you down?"_

Six guys, dressed in black all the all the way down to the masks on their faces. They have piercing eyes, but they are full of anger and hatred, not cold contempt. The kind that always shines in a bad guy's eyes when they think they know how to easily take down a cop. They are fighting off of rage, nothing more. A couple have their guns out and I'm sure the rest have some form of knife or pistol tucked away somewhere. All look to be about six feet or less in height, extremely stocky build, some definite muscle. Which makes them slow.

I've done all of this in less than a second because I've already started my attack.

"_Second rule of multitude combat: once you start, you never stop. Stopping gives them time to think. And what do we say about fighting one on one." The entire team responds._

_"Never let your opponent think about what's going on."_

_"Why?"_

_"Thinking is dangerous. Thinking let's them form a plan. Letting them think means letting them kill you."_

The two guys closest immediately rush me. I let the first one hit me, turning with his momentum and dropping my gun. The second doesn't even reach me before I react. The man is trying to get my arms behind my back, twisting me to face the wall. I ducklow and threw myself forward, close enough to the wall on one side of the hallway to touch.

And touch I do. Using the man behind me as a post, I push my feet against the wall and spring upwards and over the man's head, doing a full three sixty. Halfway through I wrapped ,my arms around his, so that as I land I flip his entire body with mine. And as I land I turn my arms, so I essentially chuck this guy into his buddy who I think was having a fun time trying to shot me with little avail.

The second I'm back on two legs I'm sprinting, then sliding on my knees right past the third guy to stand back up between him and the fourth. They both swing an arm to me, the third man on my left being the closest. I relax my fist, dropping the loop low, so the strap is still in my hand, but now I have some actual use for it.

Ducking to avoid goon number threes(...knife? Shank? I don't know, something pointy) I slip the strap over his arm, then stand and pull, yanking his arm hard in the direction of the guy to my right. Unfortunate for him, his pall tries to jab his knife at me right as I yank, so the perp is pulled off balance right into the knife which makes it him in his chest.

As he falls I let go of one end of the strap, jerking my hand slightly to ensure the thick fabrics stays in my hand not in his. The man in front of me, who earns the title of idiot of the year, lets his hand fall with his comrade, the hesitation on letting go of the knife pulling his entire arm and there for him off balance out of stance.

Some part of me wishes I could comment on how easy this is.

"_Rule number three: never ever stop to gloat. Don't talk. Don't even smile. Because that's giving them time to think. Refer to rule member two, on my opinion of letting people think."_

Also just a side note- this isn't happening in a time frame of five or ten minutes. This is fast, so fast the moves are almost simultaneous. One of the few things I can pride myself on, is that whether it's running or fighting, I can really move if I want to. Anyway. Back to dumbo the giant.

One flick of my wrist and the strap twirls its self back around my wrist. It won't stay, I'm not holding it, but I don't need to. I just need it out of my way for three second. In which time I slam a flat blade of a hand into his throat, send a hard knuckle to his sternum, drop a right undercut to his stomach while kneeing him in the groin. I then reached up, grabbing behind his neck and pull, going to one knee on the floor, slamming his head straight down onto the other that remains raised. He's out like a light.

The strap unraveled from around my arm, however I continue to hold onto one end. Leaping over the unconscious body in front of me, I lean forward mid flight, my hands land first before my feet follow, pushing me back upward like a cat.

_"Rule number four: you __**fight**_ _on all fours."_

There's baddie number five, like a sitting duck in front of me. I doubt he really thought he'd have to fight at all or that I'd come at him this fast. (It's been less than a minute since this whole thing started.) he tenses, hand reaching behind him, I'm assuming to go for his gun, but it's all in vain. I'm already there.

When I pushed off with my feet, I intentionally went sideways. My right foot pushes off the hallway wall, (the narrow halls in this place are the shit) almost parallel with his body. As I fly past-_over_ his shoulder, my left hand throws the end of the strap out (the one I'm not holding) , it wraps around his neck. Still in the air my right hand grabs the other end. As my feet touch the ground I force my arms forward, dropping to one knee again to get a better position. As my arms swing over my head, the strap dragging the man by his neck to follow. His face slams down a couple of feet in front of me.

I finally discard the strap, no longer needing it for my defense. Or offense whatever you want to call it. I relax for a moment, a second really before something clicks.

'_Idiot!' _ I internally scream at myself, wrist twisting while I stand, fervently trying to get my knife. It's too late though as I'm painfully reminded of two pretty important rules. One doesn't even have to do with combat in general, it's just a good life rule.

Know your surrounding.

Something I obviously completely forgot about, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been so surprised when I suddenly found myself getting pushing through a door and dropping into open space for a split second before beginning to roll down a set of heavy concrete stairs.

Of course I would even have gotten that far, if I had remembered one of Rachel's most final rules.

Rule six.

Never forget the last man.

(I know, I skipped a rule, but five was just to fight low to the ground. Not extremely important.)

This last man, had used my hesitation to charge at me, hitting me right as I stood up completely. We both we slammed into a blue metal push door, which lead to the tangling of feet, which lead to both of us tumbling quite painfully down said stairs.

I come to a jarring halt halfway off the landing. My assailant tumbled a few more steps to the next level, a few feet below me. My knife, which was partway out of my sleeve when I was tackled, now lies some six inches in front of my right hand that it so graciously sliced open on the way down. That doesn't stop me of course, from lunging forward and gripping it in the very same hand, then twisting and throwing it straight at the man below, who had just stood on wobbly legs.

The knife imbeds itself deep in his eye, a gross squishy kind of sound reaching my ears as it hits. His other eye rolls back in his head and he drops to the ground, odds of him being alive quite slim. Groaning I claw my way down the rest of the steps, letting out a gasp as I stand on the landing. Pain blossoms my shoulder where I originally hit the first step, enough that i have to consider the possibility that it might be broken. It fades though, retreating from a force to a dull throb, a quick examination confirming that it's not dislocated and if it is broken then it has to be a small fracture. Either that or I'm just in shock so the pain isn't really registering. Oh well.

Peering around, I see some old chipped off paint on the wall, barely forming a number. Coupled with the cracked and crumbling concrete I get the feeling that this set of stairs was taken out of use before the building was. It wasn't on the little mappy thing Ruzek found, so I guess it was condemned a while ago or something...which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

Whatever the reason there _is_ still a door I'm able to pry open and go through, leading to a seemingly identical floor as the one I was just thrown from. The door clanks shut behind me as I gaze to my left then my right trying to discern which end of the hallway I should choose as a destination. Not that it seems to matter, when two more men appear to my left, guns raised with intent to kill.

Okay, C'mon guys. I mean, I know Antonio was clearing this floor by himself, but Erin was supposed to be helping him. I am definitely going to assume that all the commotion over the coms is that everyone was in a fight of their own. So either they won and ran to help everyone else or...they're dead.

Which would be an unpreferable outcome.

The first man fires.

The bullet slams into my left shoulder, thankfully embedding itself in my kevlar, although it does spin me around. I end up on my ass, staring up at the man as he aims the gun again, only this time at my head. He sneers.

"You should never have come here cop." I cough painfully in response.

"This is no place for anyone bound to the law. Especially idiots like you and your team. It was a mistake to split up like you did. Now your team will die with you." Smiling, I raise my hands in a placating gesture, then roll, hitting the man's legs and making him fall where I once laid. Standing, I throw a front kick into the man's counterpart, who rushed me the second I regained my feet. My foot sends him sprawling. Instantly I turn and slam a fist into the temple of my original attacker, who was just rising off the ground. If my knuckles don't knock him unconscious, his head hitting the floor definitely did.

Whipping around, I face the other goon. The man stands on wobbly legs. I charge.

At the last second I duck to the side and use my momentum to swing my legs up and around his neck. So, while I'm basically hanging upside down by my ankles, my added weight bring the brute to the ground. On top of me I might add, but hey, it's not a perfect move. Besides, I pushed my feet down, arching my back, so that when he feel, I basically forced his head to become very familiar to the ground.

Okay, okay, so he didn't land on top of me. I've perfected that move. Hooray. Jay lied.

I stand, breathing hard. I'm just looking down, seeing the body's and trying to convince myself that no, they aren't dead, and yes, you used your skills for the right things when-

-suddenly I'm thrown forward, pushed to the ground by some unseen force. I land face first on the cold linoleum floor, blood instantly filling my mouth from the impact. My chest heaves and a scream forces its way through clenched teeth as white hot pain erupts from my back, sending fingers of agony up my spine.

Damn. I didn't even hear the shot. For that's what it must be, a bullet. Fear and pain battle in my mind, all for different reason. Fear for my life urges me to move, to crawl forward and grab the gun that's three feet away. The pain urges me not to, along with the fear for my legs. If I move the wrong way and that bullet shifts...well that's enough to make stay still, at least for a moment. I've been paralyzed before, and now it's one of my greatest fears. I'd rather be dead not be able to run again.

Then my thoughts go to Erin and the team and them having to find my dead body and I refuse to let Erin mourn me. Plus, the adrenaline and shock have mixed together in a perfect "I-can't-feel-pain" smoothie. It's pretty great.

I actually make it to my hands and knees before the gun fires into my lower back again. I hear it this time, an echoing crack that sounds as if a thousand broomsticks were breaking at once. The force once again slams me to the ground. This time though, I'm pretty sure the blood that spills from my mouth, isn't from a cut in my lip.

A sadistic laugh cuts through the air, mocking my efforts. My chest hurts from gasping for breath. I push up onto my elbows, almost in a plank position, and army crawl forward. The shooter finally makes himself known with an accented voice, but I can't tell where he's from.

"To see a man fall from grace and reduced to only what he has inside is a gratifying experience. To _bring_ that man to his knees is something as equally amazing. For you get to see what it is at the core of that man. And how easy it is to strip those things from him." He ends his sentence with third and final shot. I don't even feel this one, but the impact puts me down. While some part of me hopes he just finally hit my vest instead of my back, but with the way my body is responding right now, I'm inclined to believe other wise. Instead I just lay there, bleeding out, with this madman above me.

Yet, it's okay. Because while I can't feel the pain any more, I have just about achieved my goal. The gunner kneels down and looks at me curiously. My vision has started to blur to an alarming degree but I can vaguely make out that his face and then suddenly I realize where that accent came from. He's Russian.

_Oh my god, the blood on the wall. Those words were in Russian. Jesus christ he's a Rider-_

His finger poke me. Another laugh.

"Only one group in the world knows that move, along with the many others you have demonstrated. You are a ranger. And considering the fact that you performed those moves with a distinct type of accuracy and skill, I'm going to guess you helped develop them. So then...were you one of the first recruits? Or part of the Original seven?"

His soviet accent is more pronounced now that he's talking in my ear. His monologuing is useful though. My hands have been slowly inching forward because now I and now my arm is almost fully extended, my fingers just inches from the gun. But I must tense or something when he mentions O7R because he seems to realize my silence is so much louder than my words.

"No...something more. My god, I've found a leader. Ha! So _lieutenant_ do you-" I give him no warning, just twist around, aim, and squeeze the trigger, effectively splattering his brain across the wall behind him.

"It's... _detective_." I hiss, then slowly roll back over onto my stomach, letting the gun slip from my weak hands, hands that I then use to slide myself press my palms flat to the floor and slowly, ever so slowly push myself across the floor, dragging the lower half of my body which I can no longer feel. It doesn't alarm me though, probably because my entire body is slowly going numb.

The hallway seems to get longer, the end so much farther away with every pull. My goal being to reach the ear com thingy I pulled out not wanting to listen to Voight. Yeah I know. Stupid me.

I'm feeling even stupider when I finally reach the end of hall. I remember the radio I have strapped to my vest and stop long enough to ask myself WHY THE LIVING _FUCK_ HAVEN'T I USED IT?! I roll slightly to the side and ah, there's the pain I haven't been privy to. My entire body explodes with agony. I grit my teeth and scream, tears leaking from my eyes without permission.

My hand grasps my radio or...what's left of it. The thing is in pieces. I can vaguely recall it being hit by a stray bullet...I think it was...when I was-was upstairs? It's getting harder and harder to think, to remember. Why were we here? There-there was this murder and it had something to do with- with-...

The thoughts disappear because there, about three feet in front of me is...my earpiece? What? I thought-it was-what?! Was that whole trip down the stairs just some extremely real hallucination? Maybe it's not mine or maybe I'm just unconscious upstairs and this is just my brains giving me some really fucked up dream.

Whatever the case (assuming this has all been real) that thing is my lifeline.

My vision tunnels to include this one little piece of equipment. I'm close enough to the corner of the wall I can use it as-well, as a wall. I try to move my legs but all that does is send more flames of white hot agony up my spine, so bad I cry out and more tears fall unwillingly down my face.

Okay. Legs are out. I resort back to my hands, gripping the corner with white knuckles and pushing off with everything I've got. Which almost isn't enough. I manage to squirm the last inch and grab the white plastic piece, fumbling to put it in my ear. I don't speak at first, I just lay my head down on my hands, breathing heavy and while the pain has made it to the point I can no longer move, I smile. A slight smile that leaves as I recall one of the goons threats.

_"It was a mistake to split up. Now your team will die with you."  
_  
Terror grips me for a second as I contemplate the idea of me being the last of them alive. Only one way to find out.

"Hello?" My voice comes out rusty and quiet, and the coughing that follows brings up so much blood it spills out of my mouth before I can stop it. I raise my head a fraction of an inch and spit to the side.

"Hello?" I repeat, louder this time.

"Hey, anyone on coms?" There is this long fateful moment where I'm met only by silence and I think 'that's it then. They are either dead, dying, or taken and I'm about to join them.' Then I hear her.

"Jay?" Erin's voice is scared and hopeful, like she can't believe I'm really talking.

"Erin! Oh man. Are you-is everyone okay?!"

"Yeah, Jay I'm fine. I-we thought we lost you." Her voice cracks at the end and I suddenly get what happened. She must have been screaming into the com for me to respond and if she was attacked-which I am sure she was-she probably thought I was dead.

"Everyone else?" I question.

"Yah, dufus, we're fine." Antonio's casual reply makes me laugh out loud with relief. With a sigh, I let my head drop back down to rest on my hands.

"What about you? You good?" Dawson continues. I pause and it finally settles in that I've been shot.

"Halstead? Are you okay?" I swallow hard.

"Not so much." Even I can tell how shaky my voice is, but at this point, I've stopped caring. The pain in my body has started to decline and I'm finding it harder to hold onto reality. My thoughts are spiraling around my head, bouncing into each other, choosing random paths that make it impossible to catch them.

"Jay! Where are you?!" Lindsay frantically calls to me. I try to remember where...

"I-I think I'm-I'm, um-" I stutter trying to recall something, anything that could help them find me. But everything is slipping, fading away into this static gray that fills my mind and makes my eyes feel heavy.

Erin speaks again. I cannot decipher her words, but her voice triggers memories. Happy moments at Molly's with the team, Al somehow making Voight smile, Antonio laughing at something stupid Ruzek did. Erin's face, calm and beautiful in sleep, hair ruffled as she lays across from me after our first night together.

A different image, one of concrete and metal. Stairs with faded yellow letters painted across a concrete wall with a door. A landing with a pool of blood from a body I dropped with a knife. The knife I got from Rachel when-when I was a kid. But that...that was almost twenty years ago. This is from today...wasn't it?

_'I have to tell them.' _I think. It's probably too late, but I make the effort because the static grey is turning black. With death or unconsciousness I don't know, although I'm sure the latter will _definitely _be closely followed by death.

My team has been talking to me, begging for me to respond, I'm sure. I haven't heard them but C'mon. It's intelligence. What do you expect. High risk situations is what they do. Worrying about their teammate who is hurt and won't respond? That's a given.

"Third...floor." I barely whisper. I don't even know if they could heard me. It doesn't matter though. The eternal darkness consumes everything and the world falls away.

* * *

**Oh man. It's finally done! Only took me two months-eep! Sorry. Soccer season combined with dance finals and took over my life. But as you may be able to tell, that's all over and I can FINALLY WRITE AGAIN! So excited. Um, so next to be updated will be Extreme Ways (Don't worry, the next chapter for the fall is definitely in the works, as well as a couple of one shots I've been meaning to post.)**

**REVIEW!**

**Please? :D**


	5. Cut The Rope

**Okay, so first off let me make something painfully clear-**

**the last chapter should have been two. It was enormous compared to all my other chapters, and is probably going the only one like it. I mean...it was basically a one shot. So while I'm sure many of you enjoyed it, unfortunately, this chapter, nor the ones following it, will be as long.**

**Cut the Rope- Charlotte OC**

**MUST READ-**

**The beginning of this one is set at the same time as the prologue, so Jay is seven again HOWEVER-this is **_**Rachel's P.O.V.**_

**_Warning: dark themes, suicide triggers_**

**If you are super sad right now, this may not be the best thing to read.**

**Shout out for real guys. Keep breathing. Keep living. You aren't worthless. Just keep moving. It gets better. I promise.**

**For Taylor. You are the reason I can still smile.**

* * *

**Rachel's P.O.V.**

"_Who's that?" My hand tenses on my knife, the hilt comforting in my palm. Odd how a ten year old girl takes comfort in a blade. I pause halfway through the door to the second room of the house._

"_This is Jay." I watch out of the corner of my eye as Alani and shy exchange surprised looks. I don't think I've ever answered them before. At least not with a name. Normally it's just 'a friend' and that's the end of it. Of course, normally, the people I bring home with me are gone by the morning, so i find there to be no real need for names. _

_I ask them anyway. But only when I think they feel safe sitting in the same room as me. _

_I guess normal parents would have an issue with their daughter bringing home random strange children. But instead of asking if he's okay, (his nose is still bleeding) shy simply says _

"_Don't get pregnant. Dare's bringing home dinner at nine." I nod at the information, making a mental note to keep my door closed as they resume their talk of street politics._

"_C'mon." I whisper, pulling the dark haired boy into my designated room and flicking the lights on, locking the door before sitting on my ground floor mattress that serves as my bed. Shuffling the mounds of blankets I have sitting on top of it I make a small space next to me. _

"_Sit."_

"_I'm okay." I stare at him incredulously as he sways on his feet, the beating he took earlier obviously taking its toll on his small frail body. Of course, I'm sure it didn't help that I dragged him all the way across Miami. _

_I knew he couldn't go back. I've been watching this kid for a long time, and for him to go home without any smack was for him to walk to his death. It would of been a smart move, getting his dad hooked on coke, except there was no way a seven year old kid could get a constant supply for long. It's amazing the way he got it in the first place and still didn't get killed. Marano is no weak player in the drug business, and if he ever found out it was a seven year old kid taking his product, Jay would become just another unsolved murder in the city of girls._

_Needless to say, I had to half drag the kid from West Little River all the way to south Miami. By the time I got him to the little Mexican cafe that serves as my home, he was almost shaking from shock and exhaustion. _

"_Fine. I'll stand." Getting up the boy just stares at me incredulously before I grab him and gently push him onto my fluffy mound of comforters. My room isn't anything fancy, but it's mine and that says a lot for my situation._

"_Parent's?" He asks, unconsciously nestling further into the blankets._

"_Mom was killed out of punishment for my dad not paying his debt to local drug dealer, dad was killed in jail after taking the fall for her murder." I jerk my head toward the other room we entered in._

"_Shy is Alani's sister, Dare is short for Darien, Alani's husband and the only man in the picture. His brother is the one who killed my Dad. Had a soft spot for kids so they took me in when I was six after my mother died. " I swallow hard, emotion suddenly making it hard to talk._

"_We're tight." He nods again. I still can't read him. There is absolutely zero emotion on his face, something quite rare for a seven year old. I tell myself it's a defense strategy, and that I did the same thing when my father was beating me. Still, annoyance at my inability to fully judge him makes me snippy._

"_What about you?" I ask, sitting on my rickety bureau and tossing him a random juice box, which he barely catches but eagerly opens and starts to consume._

"_Dunno." Comes a rasping reply._

"_Where's your mother?" _

"_Left a while ago I think. Dad's all I really know." I nod knowingly, watching as he carefully sets the now empty container on the floor before re-cocooning himself in the fluffy layers. There's a small pause of silence. Then he asks the inevitable question._

"_Why'd you save me?"_

_Most of my rescues ask the same thing, all in varying words, and I'm ready for it. This kid though. The way he asks it, is like someone helping him, even just the tiniest bit, isn't even a possibility. Like someone saying hi to him would make his world. I just saved his life, gave him food and a warm place to rest. I just became god. _

_The raw anguish in his voice takes my breath straight from my lungs, making it hard to swallow for the second time in five minutes. What is it with this kid. My heart makes me answer honestly._

"_Because."_

"_Because __**why**__."_

"_Because your different Jay. You defy the odds."_

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

This is not something I can do. I think I have excepted that by now. Maybe it was when he almost died the first time. Maybe it was the second, or the third, when I really believed he was dead. I couldn't tell you at when it happened, but my heart and sanity have clearly established the fact I can not lose Jay Halstead.

It's painfully annoying sometimes, how I care about him, but at the same, (as this is part of being in love) it's something that has saved his life more than once.

I shouldn't have left. I should have stayed right next to him while he cleared that floor. Antonio didn't need my help. By the time I got down stairs, we had already lost communication with Halstead. Voight was screaming at us to get to his floor, so I never even made it onto the third before rendezvousing with Dawson. We stopped on the stairs for a split second, quickly relaying information to each other before Ruzek joined us, Al and Hank further down the stairs.

It became apparent they knew we were coming. Even for a large building, it normally (at least according to the C.I.'s) never held a lot of people, they moved in shifts, so if the police ever raided, only a handful of insurgents would be caught.

Each pair was met with a floor full of masked men aiming semi-automatics. It took a while, but eventually, everyone on the first and second floor was either dead or in cuffs. Antonio, however was only about halfway through his floor when we were ordered to fall back, and he hadn't met a soul.

Voight and Al finally join us.

"You alright?" Voight asks, and I'm about to scream at him, that no, I'm not because my partner is doing the impossible right now, when a single gunshot echoes above us. There's a moment pause, before more follow, one right after the other, a mark of a semi-auto. We do hesitate, the three younger members of intelligence sprinting up the next flight of stairs. The burst of shots stop as we burst across the threshold. I'm about two steps into the left side of hallway, when a yell sounds, followed closely by a loud banging of metal.

It initiates a faced paced walk, though my feet so desperately want to run. Al is on my right shoulder, Atwater on my left, as we move down the hall. I reach the end of the hall, a crumpled heap of clothing lying on the side of the passageway, right before it turns a corner.

"Body." I whisper into the com, keeping my gun raised as Al checks for a pulse, a quick shake of his head confirming that the gunshot wound to the man's head killed him.

"Is it him?" My throat closes slightly at Hank's words. _Does he really think Jay's dead? Should I really be thinking he's not?!_

"No. But this guy is from eastern Europe, definitely not Russian." There is a silent sigh of relief felt by everyone at the senior detectives words. I heft my gun again, moving forward and around the corner to see Voight and Ruzek standing at the opposite end of a long but slightly narrow hallway. In between us? About five bodies, none of them showing any signs of life.

Grimacing as I step in a small puddle of blood, I force myself forward, finding no pulse on the first body, Hank and Atwater being the only ones who find people who are alive.

There is one problem, however apparent when we all ensure that we've checked every corner of this floor.

Jay isn't here.

I'm about to scream or break down and cry or something stupid when he decides to make one of his timely appearances.

"_Hello?"_ A scratchy voice sounds over the team's coms and I find myself giving a large gasp of relief, although it is slightly odd, seeing as we found his ear radio on the floor next to the dead guy. Well, the first dead guy. The thought is dissolved however when I remember Antonio scooping it up to replace his lost one.

The voice quickly comes again, repeating its message and following it with a question demanding a conscious response. Somewhere in me I wonder why he thinks none of us would be able to answer his call.

"Jay?" My voice is packed with emotion, I can tell, but no one gives notice to it as I continue to talk to him, reassuring him of our safety. Antonio catches what I'm missing and interrupts before I can continue to hog Halstead's attention.

"What about you? You good?" He asks, and then repeats it again when the reply is hesitant.

"_Not so much." _Those three words slice into my heart, filling my body with pulse pounding worry and fear.

"Jay-Where are you?" I ask urgently, praying he doesn't slip into unconsciousness before we can locate him. Unfortunately, his mumbled reply confirms that he's losing the battle.

"Halstead, where are you?!" Just about screaming the words this time, we are all tense, staring fearfully at each other for a moment before he whispers a response. In the same instant, Ruzek pushes open an old metal door that wasn't fully closes due to its broken lock.

I am running, sprinting, _flying_ down these stairs, taking no time to acknowledge the bloody body at the bottom of them. Al is next to me as we slam through the door, easily following the trail of bodies towards the end of the hallway where there is blood splatter all over the white walls. The trail of dead guys end there, but once again it is not hard to follow the obvious trail of destruction to him. Actually is more like the trail of smeared blood leading to a single limp person at the end of it.

His head is resting on his right arm, facing away from me, although even from the rapidly closing distance, I can see the holes in his back adding blood to the too large pool spreading from his torso.

I want to puke. I'm actually convinced I will, because my breathing is ragged and completely out of control, and it's making my nausea grow at an astounding rate. The only thing that keeps me from having a panic attack is Olinski's hand on my arm.

"He needs you Erin. Just remember that." Painfully gasping in another breath I slid to my knees next to him, two fingers instantly on his carotid. My pulse is too fast and I can't discern if he even has one because my heart is beating to fast in my fingers. I stare horrified at Al who stares back, until Antonio pushes my own fingers out of the way to feel for himself.

"He's still alive. Pulse is faint, but it's still there." He says in a hard voice, clearly trying to hide his emotions. I feel as though I should do the same, but there is this hard knot of panic and terror in my chest that seems to prevent my brain from forming coherent thoughts.

I watch, stupefied as Voight yells at the two younger members of our team. Ruzek and Atwater go sprinting off to get help as Hank kneels and places my hands over one of the soaked holes in his sweat shirt, just below his vest, but left of his spine. I lean forward automatically, putting most of my weight on the gunshot wound. Antonio and Voight out pressure on the other two gsw's, both of which I note are close to his spine, but not so close that I think they actually hit it. Of course, if any of the bullets were to shift...I squeeze my eyes shut at the thought, breathing through my mouth.

'_God if he's paralyzed-'_

"Erin, you can go with him in the ambulance but you need to let go _right now_ or he's not going to make it to the hospital." My eyes snap open to see Brett from 51 staring at me evenly. Quickly I let go and scramble back, glancing around, trying to orientate myself with the present. Clearly, that wasn't the first time I had been asked, and they certainly didn't just appear from nowhere.

Hank helps me to my feet as the rest of the guys help move Jay to the backboard. Carefully but with a sense of urgency do we descend the stairs to the ground floor. During the trip down, I'd like to say something happened, that I went numb or something. Never happened. If anything the knot of emotion inside me got bigger. Still I had yet to start bawling, so points for Lindsay.

Outside there is a enormous amount of police activity. Multiple ambulances pull up, although after seeing Jay's war path, they're gonna need more. A armored police van roles up for the transport of multiple criminals, quickly followed by patrol cars and our swat that we needed twenty minutes ago. Everyones shouting orders and yelling between each that I barely hear Hank telling me how they'll meet me at the hospital.

The ride is quiet, partially because I think the pressure and tension in the cab is too high for simple reassurances. The girl working on him (I think her name is like Chillz or something) mutters something as I help take his vest off and she doesn't find any exit wound, although two of the bullets are close to the surface of his skin. Still, all the blood is exiting his body from his back, so she is forced to keep him lying on his stomach, despite the fact that he is barely breathing.

Luckily there is no time for me to dwell on what I'm doing as I press my hands on some gauze covering one of the unplanned hole in his body. We reach the hospital in near record time, my hand staying pressed on his back as doctors reach out to receive the gurney. I am allowed to stay with him until they transfer him to the bed in a trauma room.

A nurse gently pulls me behind the glass section that encloses the room. Now that Jay isn't being worked on in a moving car, they are able to turn him on his side. Instantly a tube is pushed down his throat, machines hooked up to his bare chest (they cut his shirt off in the ambulance.) The doctors yell things at each other, saying things fluid in his lungs and heart. A bullet must have travelled they say. Surgery now. Need to move. Not much time.

When they leave with him, it's like they take my awareness with him. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what to do. A dark skinned nurse takes my hands and gently tugs me toward the bathrooms.

'_lucky' _I think as she helps me wash the blood off my hands and arms. I would have just keep standing there staring at an empty room for eternity had she not showed me what a normal person would be doing. Eventually the water running off my hands is clear and I walk numbly to a seat in the designated sitting area for 'family and friends of loved one who's dying'. My fingers play with a dog tag that hang around my neck. His. Halstead gave it to me a while ago during one particularly painful drunken outburst of mine when I told him how worried I was about him.

I choke on my sobs and wait.

* * *

**_Jay's P.O.V. (Miami)_**

_This time the punches don't stop. They don't stop and the knowledge that they aren't going to stop is something new to me. Normally, what keeps me sane during these beatings is the fact that at some point, my father gets tired or bored or his rage fades slightly and he leaves me bleeding and bruised somewhere._

_This time I really think he's going to kill me. I'm eight years old and I'm going to die at my own father's hands._

_I shouldn't have said it. I never should have yelled back. I usually don't. Defending myself during one of his rage episodes always ends up with a harsher beating. I suppose all the time with Rachel has given me a bit of rebellious streak._

_I came home later than normal, almost four in the morning. He was sitting in our dark kitchen waiting. Asked where I was. _

"_A friends house."_

"_Friends?" The darkness does nothing to hide the hideous sneer on his face._

"_No one would ever want to come within ten feet of you, never mind be friends with a weak, pathetic, __**filthy**_ _bitch like you!"_

"_At least she fucking cares about me!" I know. Naughty words for a kid under ten. Apparently he thinks so too. Because that's when he jumped up and threw me across the room. I slammed hard into the floor and he just started kicking and punching and screaming at me. _

_Annoying._

_Ugly._

_It's all I hear. It's feels like it's all I've ever heard. All I'll ever hear. This is my fault. Everything is my fault. _

_I didn't want to fight with Rachel. I never wanted to make her mad or hurt her. I know I did. When I told her I didn't care about Alani or Shy or Dare. When I told her she was an idiot. When I called her a piece of shit. When I told her to die. _

_Worthless._

_Stupid._

_Dirty._

_**Nothing.**_

_I was angry. So angry. I didn't want her to care for me. I don't see why she wants to. When I ran around the city, trying to remember how to get to that place where she lives. Where she first took me a sixth months ago when we met. She should have just let me die. Let me drown in the Styx. Instead she had to take my anger. He had beat me while drunk, hitting a particularly sore rib so hard. I was crying. The one thing I used to pride myself on. I never cry. _

_But I was. Three hours ago I left the house bawling my eyes out it hurt so bad. Then she found me. And I was mad. I was so mad. How dare she? What gave her the right to see me so broken so-_

_**Nothing.**_

'_What am I doing?' I had asked myself. Why am I letting myself get close to her? Why is she letting me? I'm not worth her time._

_Another kick. Something in me breaks, just as the door is slammed down. She is here. There's a gun in her hand. My father turn and they scream at each other. The gun goes off._

_Nothing. _

_Hands lift me. I'm just barely aware that the person carrying me is running. There's the screeching of tires. A car door opens and I'm placed gently onto a soft seat. _

_I am nothing._

_Fingers run through my hair and a soft voice lulls me quietly into unconsciousness, echoing into past memories of my life._

"_Be different Jay."_

"_**Defy the odds."**_

* * *

**Well that ended up being completely different than expected. The last part was...yeah. Sorry for any grammer mistakes, I'm unbelievably exhausted. Plus I'm on painkillers from my most recent hospital adventure that made typing an issue. oh well. Hope you guys liked it. ****Good new is next chapter we get to find out what happens to Jay. In both scenarios. I think I can manage that one.**

**If you hate my version of Jay's childhood, or wanna see more of it, just let me know. Drop a review on your way out. :)**


	6. Love Is Blind

**Love is Blind- Lapsey**

**OMG OK AND JESSE GOT A SNAPCHAT AND HIS STORY IS LIKE THE DORKIEST PICTURES LIKE GODDAMN JESSE WTF ARE YOU DOING STAAAAAHHHHPP XD**

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

_C'mon Erin. You can do this. You can do this. He won't be mad at you. Just do it. Jays not dead, he's not dead, but if he's dying he needs to know. Just make the call_.

I take a deep breath and hit the little green button on my screen.

"_Erin! Jesus, where the hell are you guys?! The raids all over the news and you guys hadn't come back yet-"_

"Mouse." The nervous rush of words is cut off by my voice, and I can almost see his face fall at my tone. There's a small period of silence and I know he understands what it means.

"_Is he gone?_" The sentence is choked on, the pain in his voice cutting straight through me.

"No. Not-not yet." I force myself to say the words. There's a swallow from the other end of the line.

"_Should-do I need to get there?"_

"He's still in surgery."

"_Oh-Christ Erin! Lead with that next time!"_ I let out a bark of near hysterical laughter.

"_I thought he was on his fucking death bed."_

"He was shot three times in the back, one bullet traveled to his lung. He is, by a medical standpoint, on his deathbed."

"_Three ti….was his spine hit?"_

"I don't know. They wouldn't tell us anything. But mouse….it was bad. There was blood, so much blood and...I don't think he's making it outta this." The tears have once again started to flow down my face. I sniffle.

"_Erin, he's not gone yet. He's still here, still fighting. You gotta fight with him, or he's got nothing to fight for." _ The words punch me in the gut. He's right, I know he is. Desperate for air i abruptly try and change th subject, voice intentionally hard.

"Voight wants you to check in with Platt, see if anything happened before coming down. We're all at med. I'll let you know if we hear anything."

"_Erin?"_

"Yeah."

"_Don't give up on him. Not yet._" It's my turn to swallow hard.

"Ok." I whisper.

"_See you later Lindsay."_ There's a click as the line goes dead. I nod, more for the self reassurance than the idea he could somehow see me. I pocket the phone, grabbing a paper towel to wipe my tear soaked face. I don't know why, but my brain always makes the assumption that the woman's bathroom is the safest place to be when making heart breaking decisions.

Hell, now that I think about, every time I've been in a hospital I have ended up in the woman's bathroom. It's like my designated hidey hole when emotionally compromised. There's sinks to wash off blood and Voight can't come in here because he is a guy and it's, well, a girl's room. Although, that hasn't exactly stopped him before.

After splashing some water on my face and drying it again, I look semi-calm. I pull out my badge and stare. Gripping the metal with white knuckles I take a deep breath then exit the bathroom, pushing the brass back onto my belt. My phone buzzes from Mouse and I give another small nod to myself.

We have work to do.

**O-_-/-_-O**

**Jess's P.O.V.**

"Rachel." I whisper, my voice floating silently across the hotel room that is crowded with sleeping body's. I double lock the door again. Her head lifts to stare at me. It's near pitch dark in the room, the only light coming from the fading sun outside the closed curtains. Everyone climbed off our eleven hour flight ready to collapse, and just about did once we got to the hotel room.

With a little duct tape Greyson and I made sure no light could seep past the windows, but the curtains are woolen and cheap, so a small amount of sunlight passes through them regardless of our efforts. The boys took one bed, my sister and I had the other...for about five minutes, before I had to disentangle myself from Jordan and go find a fucking hardwire connector.

Don't think I've ever done anything harder than peeling my head of that heavenly pillow. But when Rachel asks for you do to do something, and she specifically tells you what would happen if it was more than just you, well, you do it. By yourself. Without anyone knowing. Even if you bout to pass out from exhaustion.

I'm all honesty, I'm not really comfortable with me being this exhausted and moving, because it gives my consciousness a chance to fuck shit up in the mental department. As it was, I had to try, actually put a considerable amount of effort into not having a PTSD led anxiety attack in the local library I was at. I mean, you get tired enough, and those mental barriers that keep you sane start to fall down.

Of course, my first Lieutenant knew this, and as I stumbled out the door with my laptop she had joined me on the open hallway, whispering a soft '_Be careful Jess.'_ Complete with the worried eyes and half panicked face. I had known it was coming, she was going to send one of us to find out about him, I had just hoped I'd get to sleep before she inevitably picked me.

Not that there will be much sleeping now, especially after I tell her what I dug up on Intelligence's recent events.

Walking stealthily over to the small desk she sits by, I crouch, handing her my phone. She plays the video that appears there. After the full twenty two minute episode plays, her face has gone through so many emotions, ones that she'll never show to the rest of the team. Her jaw clenched in fear at the first attack before her lips made a smile in pride. The pride faded to passiveness, then fear flashed underneath a protective rage that made me scared to be near her.

She hands the phone back to me, standing and grabbing her jacket, the black lit veins instantly lighting to a dim glow as she dawns it on her shoulders.

"Greg still clean?"

"Yeah. He's working for them now. Halstead got him a job as their tech guy."

"Good." She laces up her combat boots.

"What are you doing?"

"Send the video to Mouse, along with any information on that operation that you found. Don't dig, just give him what you got and go to bed."

"Wha-are you serious?"

"Extremely." I watch as she grabs her phone and keys to our rental car.

"Rachel!" The word is at normal speaking level, but after the soft tone of our whispers it sounds as if I'm yelling. We both freeze as Adams stirs slightly before resuming his soft snores that I always tease him about. (What? He _does_ sound like a kitten.)

"Where are you going?"

"He's at Med, right?" The whisper returns mine, finally allowing me to understand. She needs to know, refusing to have one of us hearing it on the news or something. For a second her eyes flash, a deadly gleam in them as an unseen warning to the person who put him in the hospital.

I don't respond and she walks out, closing the door softly behind her with a barely audible stretch of words informing me she'll be back before dawn. I send the information to my old college roommate.

'_She said you need this. Keep him safe Mouse. We're almost there.'_ He texts me back with a simple yet dangerous question. I feel the anger swirl in my stomach, centering around Rachel's decision to not tell the rest of the team about Jay. I set my jaw and reply.

'_Show them. It's time Intelligence knows who Jay really is.'_

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

"How long did they say?"

"For the ninth time, they _didn't_ say, April just told us to wait. So. We wait." I glance between an overly nervous Ruzek and Olinski. I glance at my phone again, willing the tears back again. I only let my guard slip once, a single tear tracing my cheek that I quickly whipped away. I had immediately willed myself to be stone cold. '_Push it down Erin. Push it down, lock it away, keep it in until you know.' _This is what I had repeated to myself.

I understand the simple fact that there was still a murder to be solved, still a Russian to catch, still a case in need of closing. A blubbering mess of an Erin Lindsay would be no use in doing any of those tasks. A sobbing Erin Lindsay will only be allowed when I find out if I am sobbing in relief or devastation. I do not cry for nothing.

I glance at the text again. Standing I move to find a nurse, ignoring the worried and questioned looks I receive from my team. Instead of a nurse I find Sharon Goodwin, who gladly answers my request. Returning to the team I end up checking my phone again. Then again. Actually checking my phone has become the nervous pastime for me.

"Mouse is going to be here soon. Said he got something we need to see." No one moves for moment, to surprised I think, at my hard demeanor.

"Come on." Is all I say, turning on my heel and walking towards the small, private conference room the hospital director showed me too. They follow. I text Mouse, informing him of where we are, but before I can even hit send, the tech appears at the door, distraught and nervous as ever. I almost find the audacity to ask if he's ok. His best friend is most likely dying. I'm sure he's fine.

He barely gives a nod to Voight, heading straight for the table where he plops his laptop. He then slides a black backpack off his shoulders, from it producing a couple thick case folders and some cords, one of which he uses to connect his computer to the television. He glances around at us, meeting my eyes for the first time.

"You should sit down." His voice is a mere whisper, yet I find myself and everyone else complying. Maybe it's the tone of his voice, one we've never heard from the normally jittery man.

The tone that kinds screams 'do as I ask, and I may not kill someone.'

This coming from the guy who gets so nervous speaking to his superiors that he literally develops a slight stutter and figures out how to ramble faster than the speed of light. He's more comfortable around Voight now, but when it comes to direct kinda one on one confrontation, he tends to revert back to his old habit. I'm almost mildly intrigued, but then I remember Jay is probably going to be dead by the end of the hour, and any form of concern disappears.

So it was an interesting situation we all found ourselves in, all sitting obediently in chairs like scolded children, when he hit play and a slightly grainy, black and white video popped up on the television screen.

I'm sitting, half annoyed for some reason, carelessly slumped in a rolly chair, when he is tackled. Two seconds later however, I am leaning forward in attentiveness, arms placed on the table. Everyone else copies me in some way, wide eyes and raised brows, eyes darting across the screen in confusion.

This isn't him. This can't be him. I know, at least, I _thought_ I knew, how Jay fought. He doesn't have this skill, no way. I've seen him fight. But as the video plays on, I realize that no, I haven't seen him fight. Not for real, not like he was really trying. Because despite my brains desperate belief that he wouldn't be able to hide that from us, I can recognize that it is him. I can see it in the smoothness of his movements, the ease of skill that makes fairly complicated moves look easy and simple.

"What the hell…" Ruzek's whisper echoes all of our thoughts. The last of the fight is captured as the assassin like figure that replaced my partner gets tackled into a stairs way. Mouse hits the spacebar to pause the video as we come into frame. Everyone slowly turns to him like he holds some sort of explanation as to how Jay Halstead-_our_ strong, funny, smartass Jay Halstead-just did _that_.

No one speaks for a moment, all of us staring in shock at either each other or Mouse, whose face is rock hard. He swallows, gazing at his hands on the keys while Voight speaks.

"Wanna explain to me when exactly he learned how to do that?" My fists tighten at his tone. One glance at the agitated man to my left indicates he feels the same way, if the fire in his eyes is anything to go by. Mouse raises his head, staring levels at his boss.

"You really think you know everything about Halstead?" His voice is colder than ice, dripping with rhetorical sarcasm. However before any of us can respond, the door opens abruptly with a doctor in red scrubs. His eyes widen as he realizes he interrupted something.

"Sorry Detectives I-"

"It's fine." I cut off his apology before he can start rambling, really just wanting for him to get to the point. He must understand this, whether from experiences of intuition, because he answers my waiting question.

"He made it through surgery." A sigh of relief is heard throughout the room, but the tension remains.

"You operated on him then? Doctor….?"

"Rhodes. And yes. It went well, much better than I expected. It was touch and go for a long time, because of the bullet by his lung. It was the main concern after the blood loss, although it turned out to have done little damage to him internally. We removed that bullet as well as two others and did repairs to the multiple blood vessels hit."

"His legs." My voice seemed to have dropped an octave or two with the statement. Rhodes nods, responding with an optimistic voice.

"None of the bullets hit his spine, although with the swelling from the impact odds are if he wakes up, he won't be able to feel them until the fluid starts to drain from his back. Right now we have him on the ventilator and in a medically induced coma while we give him more blood. We will keep him under for at least twenty four hours to give his body a chance to rest."

"I-I'm sorry you said 'if'?" The doctor pauses, probably trying to gauge the room for a reaction or two before giving his answer with a nod.

"Yes, I did say 'if' because there definitely is a chance that he is not going to make it through the night. _That said_…" His tone changes, turning to warning that people use in their voice when they don't want you to jump to conclusions.

"...I don't think that will be the case with Jay. The mere fact that he survived the surgery makes me very optimistic. The next twenty four hours are going to be crucial in determining his future, but I believe he's gonna pull through. He's a fighter." I grimace at his last word, but Rhodes fails to notice, instead excusing himself from the room with a promise to let us know as soon as we can see him though warning that it may be a while.

'_He's a fighter.'_ The words echo in my ears, bouncing around in my head. Suddenly Jay's voice pops into my head, as though he is sitting the room, nonchalantly spinning like a dork in one of the chairs.

'_C'mon Erin. Do what you do best. Kick some ass. Preferably on my half.' _I can picture the smirk, the sassy tone as he would say the last line. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath I mentally give myself a swift kick in the butt. Turning around, I have officially decided with a considerable amount of anger that crying Erin is going to wait a long time before she can make a reappearance and it's going to be in the arms of one perfectly healthy Jay Halstead.

Until that time however…

"Ok. Ok so Jay has some great Hand to Hand combat skills. How does this help with the case."

"Erin…" Voight looks at me with sympathy.

"NO!" I say a little too loud.

"No, you listen to me okay?! We are Intelligence, some of the best cops in this city, and as I recall, we protect our own. We _owe_ it to Jay to catch the bastard who did this to him, and find the people responsible for brutally murdering then dismembering at least seven people. It our job. And I don't know about the rest of you but I'm _really_ looking forward to kicking some ass." I look at Mouse, who seems to have calmed at my words.

"Now, you didn't just show us that video to impress us did you?" He manages a small smile, then rewinds the tape slightly.

"Top left. You see it?" We all squint.

"Does that mean, what I think it means…?" Mouse's smile spreads to a full blown grin.

"Spent a whole five minutes cracking the firewall. And damn Ruzek let me tell ya...you need some kick boxing lessons or something because that was just plain _embarrassing._"

* * *

**Jordan's P.O.V. (back at the hotel)**

_**20:00 hours. **_

"_No, _you _do_ know, you just aren't telling us."

"Jordan…" My sister sighs and I know I'm right.

"Where the hell is Rachel!?"

"Jesse, you aren't helping her, she could be hurt-"

"How could you even know? None of us have anyway of tracking her- I mean how could you let her walk out of here?!" Our voices overlap in that way that we do when we are really scared and nervous. None of us are really used to it, being back in the states, being so close to where our other lieutenant has lived for almost two years. And now we all wake up, exhausted to find Rachel gone and Jess sitting almost catatonic against the wall staring at her dead phone.

Actually I take that back. That's what _I_ woke up to when my bladder decided to make its small capacity known.

The guys woke up to me screaming at Jess to answer my question.

Doesn't help that she hasn't sleep in something like thirty six hours. That we are about the same save for the three hour catnap we just got.

"Jessica answer us god damn it what the hell happened to her!" She shrinks away from our voices before shaking her and bursting out an answer.

"JAY WAS SHOT ALRIGHT!? SHE WENT TO SEE HIM!"

We freeze.

I think everything freezes actually, my mind, maybe time, hell even the air in the room. Everything except my heart because while it has no problem thudding its way out of my chest, my lungs have an issue moving so clearly they must have been frozen along with the air.

My brain must have an issue thawing itself because next thing I'm aware of is being cradled in Greyson's arms as someone talks me through how to breath. I have no choice but to listen and slowly my exhaustion riddled thoughts come into order and my fogged mind realizes that I'm having a panic attack.

It's not my first though, and soon I'm able to breath normally again, but I opt to stay in Dick's lap. I push my head against his chest, taking comfort in his heart beat. No one says anything. Even though it's obvious to Jess and Adams that we are a couple, there's this unspoken rule that no signs of affection will get back to the Lieutenants. Then again, those two are kinda a couple on their own, just that neither of them have any idea. (_Yet_.)

"What hospital." I croak out. Jess stares at me blankly, nothing in her eyes, not a care nor a worry. I know it's not on purpose and I know she's close to falling asleep in the chair.

"Med." She whispers back. My throat closes slightly. I force myself to concentrate on breathing.

"He's still alive." Adams points out, looking up from my sisters charging phone.

"Was that from her?" Grayson asks, nodding to the device in his hand to indicate the text that just buzzed it.

"Yeah. Said she's gonna stay till they let her see them, then get back and see what we wanna do."

"Make her promise." I say in a low voice. All eyes flit to me for a moment. I don't care. I can't lose them both. I can't lose either of them.

"Make her promise she'll stay for him." I murmur again. Doing my best to let sleep pull me under. Tired. I am too tired. Maybe if I sleep, I won't have to deal with the sheer panic that is sitting in my stomach right now.

'_He was shot. He was shot. He was shot.'_

Please sleep. Come on body. You wanted this three hours ago, you can manage to want it now.

'_Too much blood. Might never walk again. Could never wake up.'_

Come on you fucking hormones. Preserve my sanity.

'_I might lose my best friend.'_ The thought bounces through my head right as my eyes close and I suddenly realize that this sleep is going to contain the worst nightmares of my life and I really, really wish I had decided to stay awake.

* * *

**Kinda short but really, this is a bit of a filler to get you introduced to a couple character and to let you know that unlike the fall I am not going to kill Jay. Again. :D**

**Also chpt 6 is already in the works, so hopefully not a two month break before this updates again.**

**REVIEW...pwease.**


	7. First Transmission

**Oh boy. Here we go again with dem flashbacks. I'm sure most you are like 'GOD DAMN IT WOMAN HOW WE SUPPOSED TO KEEP TRACK OF THIS SHIT!'**

**quite simple-If its in Miami, it's little Jay (whom I for some reason think was probably the cutest kid) and if it's in the desert then its big Jay who is a hunk and who I really want to know what the fuck happened to his convoy. And mouse. And like everything. Swear to god I wish my wish my story line for his time in Afghanistan becomes canon because the whump-*takes deep breath to stop rant***

**_Warning_: strong themes in this one-tiny mentions of sexual abuse**

**Song: First Transmission - Battleship OST (best soundtrack ever just saying)**

**Please enjoy. And _Revieeeeeeewwwwwww_.**

* * *

_Armed Convoy, just outside of Nuremberg, Germany._

"_Commence mission debrief."_

"_At zero two hundred hours last night, a distress call was received in place of a blacklisted base in the benghazi province. The communications device was code name Santi, and until three seconds before the call, it's status was deemed unusable and for lack of better term, dead."_

United Nation's Embassy Building, Single Trials Meeting Room. Berlin, Germany.

3,544 miles Northeast of the Afghanistan Border.

Jessica's P.O.V.

The room is designed like a small court intended to have no jury. Six people sit at a table that rounds to form a half circle. In front of them is another table,moon and straight, that seats five or so army generals. The seemingly most important one, that sits in the direct center of the straight table, talk with an annoying haughtiness.

"Fifty six people have died miss Novack, that's not something I take lightly."

She simply smiles and continues chewing her gum, her pair of aviators hiding her eyes.

"Neither do I, general. That's a pretty decent kill count for only one person with a knife." The sarcasm dances in her voice, tap dancing closely with disdain.

"_It is unclear who or what exactly transmitted, the only clear message was a Morse code S.O.S."_

"Ever since Corporal Longsworth died and Constable Braddock left, your team has been far past reckless."

"Hey sweetheart? You bring up my team like that again and I promise you, you _will_ find out what your left ball tastes like." The disdain has faded now, to be replaced with searing anger. The man trying to reprimand us already has our disgust. Now he has our hatred too.

"Lieutenant!"

"Oh I'm sorry! Did I _offend _you? I thought that was the whole point of this conversation! My mistake, I suppose you must've actually dragged us in here to discuss something more important than how my team operates!" It is clear now. There will be no paid respect to this man, now or ever. Most of us have no tolerance for greed and politics. I am no exception.

"Halstead-"

"_Second lieutenant _actually. And general if you really wanted to discuss my behavior, you could have just called." The man sitting to my left speaks up suddenly, one foot on the rung of my chair, allowing him to slouch in his. You couldn't tell if you didn't really know him, but he's only doing that as to hide his pain. Behind his own pair of circular aviators lies a lot of discomfort in his eyes. The last mission didn't go so well for him. It wasn't bad, but it was enough that we are all pretty protective of him right now.

"_This province is home to the most insecure area of the Middle East ever to have an American soldier walk foot on it more than once. Almost worse than Baghdad."_

"_How is that? Baghdad is a modern day death camp."_

"_Yes. The fun part about it though, is you can see it coming. When you are traveling to an lost military base rumored to be controlled by people worse than Isis, the threat won't be so nice as to walk up to you with a gun."_

"He killed-"

"_Thirty_ six people in less than two hours without using more than his bare hands and two double sided k-bars, yes I am aware."

"And you approve of his actions." She leans forward, placing two bruised knuckle hands on the table in front of her.

"Every one of those people had a direct hand in kidnapping, torturing, and/or raping and killing American soldiers. One of them specifically put a bullet through Corporal Longsworths head. Yes general. I approve of his actions."

"_The only piece of information given to the identity of this communication was the signature left in coded in the message."_

"_And this was?"_

"_A Ranger sir. It was opened using an outlet from their database."_

"Corporal Langsworth was killed by friendly fire."

"That's the official statement, yes."

"That is what really happen, Lieutenant."

"No sir, that's what you _wanted _to happen. That's what you let your son believe happened. And the second I can prove it, will be the last second of your military career as well as the end of _any _relationship you have with your son. Now. Any more questions or can we get back to work?"

"This is not what we authorized your team to do." Another smirk. This guy's a real idiot. Sorry Sam, but for a guy not to be able to read our body language when we are this obviously riled up, he must need his eyes gouged out because they weren't working in the first place. Every one of us is tense, Jay is trying hard not to say anything, and Jess on the other side of me is trying hard to control her breathing as to not kill anyone.

"Not you, no. But I do believe that the commander and chief of the American Army has a higher authority level than you."

"_You're sure of this?"_

"_We checked six times sir. There is no mistake. It was a Ranger distress call."_

"_Where are they now?"_

"_The joint black op special mission task force out of the fifty fourth regiment is currently in a commanders meeting in Germany."_

"_All of them accounted for?"_

"_The remaining members yes."_

"You will be court martial end for this!" The general should get angry more often. I think the shade of red his face is turning is fantastically hilarious.

"No, actually we won't. You need us too much. Especially for that odd looking transmition you just received from the benghazi province." Gotta love when people think we don't know everything.

"How the hell do you know-"

"No worries general Braddock, we'll be on the ground by O two hundred, Berlin time. I'll be sure to leave no blood stains this time. Hopefully that will sedate your press issue."

"_Are they aware of the situation?"_

"_Last I was informed, they were leaving the meeting as fast as possible, aiming on gearing up by zero one thirty."_

"_I understand that Baker, but are they __**aware**__."_

"_That it was a Ranger signature? No sir. They are not aware."_

"_Damn."_

"_Sir? What does this mean? I've checked every known position of every active black op. team...everyone's accounted for by word of commander, no one coded in as under duress."_

"_...call everyone in."_

"_Sir?!"_

"_I don't care the priority of the mission. Everyone comes back into safe zone. No one goes back to their base. Do it quickly, do it quietly."_

"_Yes sir. Dark run protocols initiated." _

"Sedate my press issue?! The press isn't the concern! The problem is your team just killing everyone and doing everything you want without command!"

"This is about _interrogations?!_" I blurt out. Everyone stares for a moment before what clicked in my mind, clicks in theirs. Rachel sits back in amusement, staring at the generals in front of her, seemingly awed at their audacity.

"If you wanted people to punch you coulda just said so. "

"Yeah, What's the matter? The psychos at Guantanamo getting hungry for fresh blood?" I smack Jay in the stomach, giving him a look. He jerks straight up, shifting back in his seat with a barely audible hiss of pain, making me instantly contrite.

"Nah. He's just mad we've been keeping him out of the loop." Adams jumps in, mock answering Jays question. The four other commanders haven't said a word this whole time, just simply watched the fight with a hidden delight. Even his peers don't like Braddock senior.

"_Have you gotten a call in to Rachel yet?"_

"_No sir, signals still being block. Must still be in the meeting."_

"_I thought you said they were leaving as soon as possible. Who's the meeting with?"_

"_Um...the four assisting commanders as well as General Braddock." _

"_Fanfuckingtastic." _

"_Sir once they leave that building they will turn off all communication in preparation for the op. If then go in…"_

"_There is no possible way that's one of our own sending that signal. It's the most blatant trap there could be."_

"_Baker?"_

"_Yes sir?"_

" _I'm aware."_

The General stiffens, his face morphing into a look of cold hatred.

"If you think Matt or my son would approve of what you are doing in their absence-" Rachel stands abruptly, knocking her chair over in the process.

"YOU _SON_ HELPED ME PLAN THE GOD DAMN MISSION!" She roars, white hot fury evident in every muscle, every outline of her body. The rest of us either cringe or stay statue still at her tone. It's a scary thing when Rachel gets that angry. Bowing her head slightly she takes a deep breath, seeming to compose herself.

"The next time you _dare _to threaten _my_ team, I will personally throw you into a pack of wild hungry dogs in the middle of the afghan desert. Now. You can go fuck yourself. We have work to do." We do not wait for her to tell us when, we all just stand and follow her out, as if silently commanded. As I stand I discreetly move forward and grab Halsteads arm, pulling him softly towards the door. I fucking told him not to go to the meeting, but does he ever listen to me? Nooooo. And now he's as white as a piece of chalk, is shaking, and we are about to go on a mission to one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Fucking great.

* * *

**Jays P.O.V.**

I really, really hate morphine. Like. With a passion. Partly because whenever I can feel the effects of morphine, it means I'm in a hospital. And I _hate hospitals. _

Also partly because of what morphine does to me. For a lot of people it makes them really loopy and they can't control their tongue. For others everything is the funniest shit ever.

For me, everything is really, really heavy. I can't really make my body move without some supreme effort. Just simply keeping my eyes open is something I normally can't manage for more than five minutes. It's as though somebody put a ton of heavy warm blankets over me. My body and subconscious absolutely love it. Two thirds of my whole being too comfortable to care how messed up I really am.

Which is why I hate it so much. My thoughts and memories and reason in general tend to float like a balloon filled with sulfur hexafluoride*. Everything is deeper, easier to sink down into my diluted memory so that I only remember it in some fucked up dream three months from now.

Needless to say, the drug makes me feel so good it's like nothing matters anymore. Which includes basic bodily functions. I've actually been tested to see if I was allergic to morphine because when one time they gave it to me and I stopped breathing.

What can I say? I felt really, really _good._ Who needs oxygen anyway? Besides all those heavy blankets they had on my made it hard to expand my chest.

So, the previous would be why I was vaguely surprised and concerned that there was no tube down my throat when I woke, but then again, I simultaneously didn't care.

Another cool part of drugs is that it allows my consciousness to float from subject to subject without a care.

"_Jay. Jay wake up." _That voice. I know that voice. It's from something. A memory, something triggered from long ago. She said the same words then as I was returning from a groggy unconsciousness.

You know what else morphine does? It tears down my so carefully constructed walls, the ones that protect me from what I've seen and what I've done. Which means I just kinda drift through memories while asleep.

"_C'mon Halstead I don't have a lot of time." _Ironic how a ten year old can be running late for something. And it's definitely not school because she doesn't go.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait. That voice isn't ten years old.

"_Jay your team is going to be in here any second, I need to know your ok."_

Wat.

With a moan I peel open my eyes, blurred blobs of color being my only result.

"Rachel?" I whisper, voice rather weak. And painful. I feel as though my throat is made of little needles that prick with every vibration of the word. I cough, but only once as fire tears through my body for a moment before the drugs in my veins quel it to a dull smolder.

"Hey, Jay." The reply comes from my left, a blond haired person standing in the shadowed corner. She walks up and squeezes my hand before rubbing her thumb back and forth across my wrist. I relax under the motion that has always meant a simple yet rare concept for us: '_safe'._

"You're gonna be okay. "

"Yeah." I murmur, my tongue feeling awkward and, you guessed it- heavy. This seems different though, even in my doped up state I've never been so..._wrong._ In fact my whole body feels weird, like it's disconnected from something. I have the vague impression that she says more words, but the colored blobs mix and suddenly I'm dragged under again, only feeling a slight uneasiness at what part of my life sleep will bring for me.

…

_The car moves smoothly along the cracked pavement, only small bumps and inertia change being the only things that alert me to the fact that we are moving. Turn after turn, the city lights just barely shining through the blacked out windows. _

_We must be in Dare's car. The black Camaro has always been a favorite between Rachel and I. Ironically we're another small enough to fit in the back seat. So then it must be her cradling my head in her lap, holding my head still and whispering reassurances in my ear._

_Not that they help. In all the beatings I've received, I have never, ever, felt this kind of pain. It's like my entire body was subject to a meat pulverized. Every bone, every muscles pulses with deep, screaming aches and this pressure that I know means I'm in shock. If I wasn't I'd be able to feel every pinpoint of white hot fury that my father inflicted on me._

_This all is nothing compared to my chest and back, where agony spikes with every breath. It feels like I'm broken, like something important in me is shattered and out of place. I let out a moan, fear shooting through my bones. Am I dying?!_

"_No. No your not. I won't allow it." A reply comes, one that I wasn't expecting. I said that out loud? Damn. Something wetlands on my cheek. _

"_Ray?" I whisper, this time with more intention than before._

"_Yeah Jay?" _

"_Are 'u cr'n?" There's a pause, followed by an indignant 'no.' Then as if just to spite her, more teardrops land on my face. The salt stings my face were it was cut by his ring. I feel like I'm floating, drifting into a place where nothing is obliged to exist._

"_Jay! Jay, stay awake!" _

"'_m aw'ke." My lips feel heavy and the words seem to combine into one slur of sound. I wonder if I even talked at all, or if my thought are just swirling around to much. A few minutes later, I feel the car stop. My eyes, which had been cracked in slits, slid closed. It's too much work to open them, it too much._

_Too much pain. Too much that is broken. I can't fight anymore Rachel, I can't. I'm so sorry._

_The very last thing I hear is a spoken apology directed not at me, and a statement of forgiveness that seems to jump right past me in disgust that I could ever think I was worthy of it._

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

"April?" Antonio's head jerks from its position on the wall. I glance at the clock on the wall, cringing at extremely early hour, before giving Dawson an apologetic look. The nurse stops her brisk walk at my call.

After some time debating our next move, we all settled on tag teaming the hospital, doing as much research as possible on the gang we fought against. My fingers still hurt from typing for so long. We looked up every possible angle, from the video cameras stationed on every floor of the building (Mouse was right, Ruzek did get his ass handed to him), to the symbols on the ways and the tattoos on the bodies in the morgue.

Unfortunately, for a while we got no where. At around nine, all the coroner's reports came in, giving us more information on each man, but identities of them were hard to come by. It seemed as if everything, every tat, every scar, every face just never existed. No priors on any of them, no prints in the system, no affiliations. Nothing.

Needless to say, by teen we were all too tired to continue the search, but too restless to go home and get some rest. Which left most of us battling the shit ton of paperwork we had to do. It was too our relief however, when the doctor Rhodes dude came in around midnight, informing us that he took Jay off the ventilator. Something about his stats being higher than expected. They wanted to get him off the machine as quickly as possible so his body wouldn't become dependent on it.

That said, Rhodes informed us he didn't expect Jay to wake up for a while, and tried to encourage us to go home. When met with condescending stares, he just smiled wryly.

"Didn't think so. I'll send a nurse to bring you to his room once he's situated." Was he said before exiting. We packed our stuff as well as possible in the conference room we had basically confiscated for the total of the eleven hours. And likely more.

But that conversation had been an hour ago and I am starting to wonder exactly why it takes highly trained hospital staff a full sixty minutes to move one man in a bed with wheels down one floor.

"What's up?" I look behind me, seeing the rest of the team stirring from whatever twilight they had allowed themselves to drift into. Turning back to the dark skinned woman I lower my voice slightly.

"Do you have any information on Jay? Rhodes said they'd let us know what room he was in but it's been a while and no one's said anything. Did something happen?" Despite my low tone I can feel the perked ears behind me, most of the guys standing and stretching before walking slowly to join me. Not that I'm entirely focused on them, I can just feel the presence of bodys standing behind me, just as interested as I am to find out the answer to my question, especially since Sextons face is painted with surprise.

"Nothing happened. His vitals have been holding steady for a couple hours now. He was moved about forty five minutes ago." She glances at us in confusion.

"You didn't know?" I shake my head, putting my her confusion down to the thought that one of the staff must have forgotten.

"I was under the impression she was with you guys. She said she'd tell you." I fell Alvin shift next to me, the rest of the team just as confused-and worried-as I am.

"Who's she?" He asks. April just shakes her head.

"I don't know, didn't get a name. Blond girl, kept her hair up in a high ponytail. Had a weird outfit on too."

"You give patient information to everyone you meet? Don't even bother with a name?" April looks at Ruzek, an angered look on her face.

"Yeah smart ass, I personally mail it to all your enemies too." She throws the sarcastic remark at him before rolling her eyes and turning back to me.

"She had a badge. And I was told by my superiors and _him_-" She nods to Voight..

"-that you guys are all his family. So I didn't see a reason not to tell her the room number. She said she'd tell you guys so to spare me the trouble." There's a pause, then realization dawns her features.

"She's...not part of intelligence is she." I grab her shoulders, fear for my partner in my next sentence.

"What room?!"

"316. Upstairs on the left." Instantly I'm running down the hall, slamming my shoulder into the stair access door, Alvin, Dawson, Ruzek and Atwater all jogging after me. I know Voight is probably starting to ask her about the appearance of the girl, but I give little thought to it as I run up the concrete steps, instead mentally berating myself over the mistake.

'_Stupid, stupid, stupid! We didn't even think of someone coming after him-or us! We go against a secretive gang that beheads people and don't expect any retaliation!? Call yourself a cop?! He could be dead because of you! Why did you wait so long to ask!?'_

Bursting out of the stair well, I sprint down the higher corridor, my eyes skimming the left side as the number go by in a blur.

'_310...312...314…316-'_

I skid to a halt outside the doorway, my hands catching the doorframe. Quickly looking through the window, I can only see a body lying in the dimly lit room. Calmed slightly by the absence of anyone else in there with him, I silently open the door, pulling my gun. Panting behind me quiets, then Antonio and Ruzek follow behind me in a similar manner, guns drawn as they check the bathroom and closet.

"Clear." I call out, standing up from my crouched used to check under the bed. Two more yells just like it sound from the room. Slowly we congregate around the bedside, holstering our weapons as Ruzek walks in.

"Nurse at the station says no one's been in or out of here in the last half hour."

"Before that?" Dawson asks, Adams shaking his head and shrugging.

"She was helping with a patient. I can check with the security office, but the nurse was almost positive the cameras didn't cover this part of the hallway, since there's no way out down this side. A cool breeze gently tickles my hand. I turn, searching for the source before sighing. Walking over the slightly moving curtains I tug them aside, revealing an open window. Outside it the roof of the first floor reception area that juts out of the front of the hospital. Resisting the urge to throw something I grit my teeth and turn back to the crew.

"Or so they thought." I growl, Dawson offering only a curse before exiting the room in anger. Alvin walks past me to the window, reporting no signs of disturbance on the gravel that covers the flat roofing. He turns around to share a look with me, then a soft noise sounds from across the room, drawing both our gazes to the figure in the bed.

My heart leaps in my chest, thudding hard against my rib cage as my feet bring me swiftly to the cause of my distress. My hands roam his body without touching him, unsure of themselves until I see his eyes fluttering. Gently I sit on the edge of the bed, the other two in the room forgotten as my finger softly cup his face.

"Jay?" The word, though barely a whisper, sounds like a shout to my ears. Slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes peel open, a whirlwind of emotions exploding like a stampede of butterflies in my stomach. The feeling spreads through my veins as my entire body is impossibly tense as I stare at the dull, clouded blue eyes.

Something is wrong though, because there is something in them that shouldn't be there. A longing, but really more of a soul deep hurt, an anguish that shouldn't be there in his eyes, because it wasn't there before he was shot, and it wasn't there when we first met. It's terror inducing, because the last time I saw anything even remotely close to this was when his brother died*.

His mouth open in a harsh cough that brings his head off the pillow, but is quickly dropped back as his face scrunches in pain. Finally though, I am able to make out a word, one that seems to melt every fear in my body.

"Erin?"

* * *

**Wow, I'm on a roll right? No. Not really. This just had been started while doing chapter five, but I found it didn't fit, so now its here. And its the only one I have started so Extreme Ways and The Fall will take longer. That said-**

**Hoped you liked. Drop me a REVIEW on the way out if you would. ;)**

***sulfur hexafluoride is the gas that when inhaled makes your voice deeper**

***this is referring to my other story 'The Fall' but you don't necessarily have to read that to understand this**


	8. Hold On

**I put this in the forward only because it's important:**

**To all who read Extreme Ways, I desperately need your help- I need to know what else you would like see in this story, as I am kinda of at a wall in terms of moving forward with it. SO-in a review or a pm, please leave any suggestions, as well who's P.O.V. you'd like to see next. Because I honestly have no idea. **

**All up to you. Thanks guys.**

**Warning: if mentions of someone getting sick upsets you...um, skip to Erin's P.O.V. I guess. Also swearing.**

**Hold On by Alabama Shakes**

* * *

**Jays P.O.V.**

It was like waking up in the middle of a firefight you don't remember engaging in. Something was happening around me, something that told me the milky darkness I floated in was simply a curtain. However making that shroud move was a whole different kind of difficult. It was like swimming in mud, unable to tell which way was up.

Only the voices helped me, indiscernible morphing sounds with deep undertones that I recognize as friendly, but no names come to mind. That is until one particular voice pops into the cacophony of sound, a raspy tone with anger in it. I can almost imagine her eyes blazing as she glares at whomever managed to bring on the wrath of Erin Lindsay.

The tension in the room subsides, although maybe it's more like the fear that leaves the room, as the apprehension is still there. Meanwhile, I'm still wondering what fuck is happening and trying so desperately to open my eyes.

I'm not dead right? This isn't some weird way of going to the afterlife or something? I mean I can't even remember what happened. Wouldn't a person remember how they died? And someone's touching me too, that doesn't happen when you're dead.

Right?!

Soft hands caress my face, finally giving me a way to the surface. I leave the milky darkness behind for a dim, blurry hospital room. And a stressed out Erin. She says...something. My name I think, and it's said fearfully, and I'm thinking now I am the cause of her anger.

I'm vaguely aware of the other two bodies in the room, both awkwardly standing but not yet wanting to leave. Erin is still staring at me, her hands holding my face, making me feel a scruff that has grown there.

"'M ok?" My tongue still has that heavy weight on it, making any words slurred and distorted. And that whole thought to word process in my brain seems completely disconnected so it's like any intelligent talk I planned on doing has flown out the window.

"Yeah. Yeah, you're okay. Do you remember what happened?" I shake my head 'no', not even beginning to really understanding all the signals coming from my body.

Still, there's something I'm missing, something in my brain that screams to be addressed.

"You 'k?" Erin nods, her curls bouncing with the intensity of it.

"Yeah Jay, I'm fine, everyone's okay." She bushes a hand through my hair, making me lean into the comforting touch. "It's you we're worried about." A frown, that thing still nagging me to address it. It's like two things actually. One from memory the other from my body.

"N't g'd." I slur out, huffing in annoyance at my inability to form simple words. Lindsay too, notices, but her brow furrows in worry, rather than anger.

"What?"

"N-not g-good." I mumble, the words sticking to my lips. A flash of panic shows in her eyes and I just don't know why. She gently places a hand on my forehead. It's cold and feels nice.

"Jay...are you...can you…" She pauses, clearly trying to figure how to word her sentence.

"Is it hard to talk?" She finally settles on the question, hitting the problem right on the mark. I nod, a whimper stuck in my throat. That black curtain has started to creep back into my vision but there's still that thing, that important thing I need to tell them. What was it again?

Erin turns her head to say something to the two blobs behind her that I think might be Alvin and Ruzek. They disappear outside my vision.

"'Rin." The hands are back, running through my hair and gently rubbing circles on my cheek.

"I'm right here Jay, I'm right here." She sounds close to crying. I don't want her to cry, but I'm tired I'm so tired and this feeling in me is getting worse.

"D'nt feel good." I moan, managing to roll my head away from her because really I'm going to puke and I don't want to do it on her. The hands stop and then my body and propelling me upright as I'm throwing up on myself but I can't stop heaving and it _hurts, _it hurts so _bad_. I'm basically sobbing and puking then sobbing harder because of the pain which then makes me puke more.

At some point I run out of stomach contents, but my throat still constricts with dry heaves that feel like someone stabbing burning needles into my internal organs. I cry out and there's someone yelling, telling someone else to do something, anything, because he's in pain and I think they're talking about me.

That black curtain seems to expand from my eyes and enfolds my entire body. I can just feel hands on my back, some holding my head as I let it drop forward. They gently lay me back into this soft cloud thing behind me, and then it's like a blessing from a higher being as I fall asleep.

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

"What the fuck was that?!"

"Erin-"

"No! You said he was okay! _That_-" I shoot a finger towards the room.

"-is _not _okay!" My chest is heaving, anger just barely masking my fear. Im so close to crying, to breaking down right here, because It's all crashing back to me, how close that first bullet was, the car accident, our freak decision to stop the team from witnessing a massacre and then...Voight saying he should go back…and then finding him in all that blood...

_Oh god I'm losing him…_

He was supposed to be okay. He was awake and he was talking even if he didn't remember what happened. But then...it was like talking to a little kid who was sick. He couldn't talk normally, which could have been an effect of the drugs except then he started getting sick. Jay sat up so fast I barely had time to move out of the way.

As doctors and nurses rushed in after hearing my yells, he started puking up blood. They pushed me out of the way where I was caught by Alvin who had to drag me from the room. I was yelling, screaming, begging them to do something. He was in pain, in so much pain. I could tell by the sobs wracking his body, the tears streaming down his face and the absolutely heart breaking cries of pain he emitted against his will.

They had promptly sedated him, gloved hands laying him back against the pillows while others pull away the soiled blankets and his gown that's covered in gunk. As we were pushed out I catch a glimpse of his chest, red seeping through the white bandages there.

"Listen, we're going to take him back down to the O.R. I'm pretty sure we know what's causing it."

"_Pretty sure_?!" I hiss, hand itching to slap the look of the doctor's face. The one that says '_I know more than you just calm down.'_ The expression changes to one of uncertainty and then finally he speaks.

"One of the bullets fragmented into multiple pieces. Some of These pieces pierced veins and traveled through the bloodstream until they got lodged in other areas. This created a lot of internal bleeding, which is why the first surgery took so long. Unfortunately, one of those pieces got lodged in the aorta. We couldn't touch it."

My knuckles actually crack, my fists are so tight.

"So let me understand this." I snarl. "You thought it would be a good idea to leave a jagged piece of metal two inches away from his heart."

"Detective he wasn't strong enough to-"

I have never slapped someone so hard before, and I doubt I ever will again, but my hand actually leaves a red mark on his cheek. I hope it bruises.

"Don't _ever_ say that again! That man is the strongest patient you will ever have the privilege to work on! So don't you _dare_ tell _me_ that _he_ isn't strong enough!" With that I'm just about crying, so I shoulder past the shocked doctor and the wide eyed faces of the team and rush for the stairs.

"Erin!" Strong hands grab my shoulders, stopping me at the end of the hallway. I try to twist away, my diaphragm already starting to spasm. I need to get away, to get some place where I can be alone to sob my eyes out or scream or punch something or just do anything to get ride of all this horrible emotion in me. But as I'm tugged close to his chest, I can't hold it back anymore.

Hank stands with his arms around me as I sob into his shoulder, trying desperately to stop while not wanting to at all.

"_I'm losing him!"_ I sob, making Voights arms tighten around me.

"You not losing him Linds. Neither are we. Halstead isn't going anywhere." His hands gently peel me off his jacket, making me look at him. I stand there, staring at the man whom I can call my father, sniffling pathetically as pushes some of my messy hair from my face.

"Come on kid, you really think Jay has the balls to leave you? He knows you'd kick his ass." A shirt bark of laughter bursts from me at the statement. He pulls me back in for another hug.

"He's going to be fine, Erin. You need to believe that." I pull away, nodding and dragging a hand underneath my nose and sniffling loudly.

"Listen, I know you're eager to get back over there…" _Not really._ I think with raise of my eyebrows.

"...but I need you to know something." My eyes narrow, remembering the conversation we had in his office.

"I don't make mistakes often. And when I do, I have a hard time admitting them. But what I said to you and to Jay was wrong. I was out of line."

"You know it's not me you should be apologizing to."

"And I'll apologize to him too! But it's pretty clear you care for him, and what I said hurt you too. I don't want him to go back, not now, not ever. You gotta understand Linds it just…"

"Happened." I finish his sentence, clearly seeing how much he was struggling to get this out. I know Voight, and when it comes to apologies, he gets more lost than a guy in a Victoria's Secret. He nods, relieved.

"So then you understand why me and Jay didn't let you in that vault." He pauses at my sly tone, weighing his words.

"Not quite. Everyone's seen some pretty gross stuff I mean-"

"Voight that wasn't just gross it was _disturbing_. The crime scene photos didn't do it justice. Maybe it was adrenaline and nerves, but we didn't want you to see that. I basically had a panic attack after seeing it. Yes I understand that we probably handled it wrong but...we didn't want that on anyone else. Especially not the team we care about." Understanding passes through his eyes and when he nods I know we are back to even.

Or so I think.

"Then what was that whole 'trust' thing?" Anger instantly surges in me again, evident in my sharp retort.

"I don't know, what with the whole 'take five minutes to answer' thing?"

"He surprised me."

"Right, so that's your excuse for actually having to think about it."

"It wasn't something I think about ever day."

"Bullshit, you thought about every time you saw me and him together. Every time we walked out to go check out a lead you had that face, that look of judgment as you tried to figure out if I'd be safe with him backing me up! And yeah, eventually that look faded, because through everything we went through you actually started to know him, and then after Terri I thought you two were okay."

"Erin I-"

"No, I'm not done. The best part? He said 'us'. Not 'me.' _Us._ Even if you still didn't trust him, you had to think about trusting me?!"

"_Erin!"_

"_What?!"_

"When I say I was surprised, I meant it! We had just been shot at, Dawson had almost died, you two were in a car accident that _should_ have killed you both and then we get wind of a crime scene that you two won't let us see and suddenly I have to scramble to try and understand how trusting you two has anything to do with anything! I was slightly caught of guard!" The last part is said extremely sarcastically, though I barely catch it, too caught up on the first part of his rant.

"Dawson was...what?!"

"A bullet went through the window, hit him in the vest." He sighs.

"Why didn't I know this?!"

"You were preoccupied. And he's fine." I swallow hard, trying to understand how I was so oblivious to everything but Jay Halstead that I didn't know Antonio had been hit.

Damn it I need sleep.

…

"How'd it go?!" Alvin raises his hands, silently asking me to slow down.

"In the nurse's words 'I don't know how, but he's alive and not in a coma.'"

"Jesus." I mutter, breathing out heavily. They had taken Jay down to surgery while me and Voight were talking, nearly two hours ago. Thier goal was to remove the fragment, which they deduced had somehow passed through the heart without killing him, then went to the lungs to do some damage. Hence the puking blood episode.

However, as Ruzek had informed me because everyone else didn't want to, they didn't think he had a chance. Me and mouse had sat for about five minutes before deciding the waiting room was just too confining. Instead we had walked around every available inch of space in the hospital that was available to the public.

We had returned only after receiving a text from Dawson, and the cryptic message sent us jogging down the halls to get the news.

"He's back on the ventilator, this time they plan on keeping him under for longer to give his body a chance to rest." I nod, remaining optimistic, telling myself that it's good, because this way I can go home, and shower and lay in my bed staring my ceiling trying to sleep. And Jay can rest. Get better. Be okay.

Be able to walk.

One of the many things I've had to deal with, but was put on the back burner, was Halsteads spine. The bullets didn't go through his back clean, and everyone is quite aware of the possibility that Jay might be wheelchair bound for the duration of his life. It's a weird concept for everyone I think, because we just can't imagine a Jay who isn't moving. At least I can't. I used to get on him about it. In the ar he'd be tapping his foot or drumming his fingers and a lot of the time it'd be both and he wouldn't realize he'd be doing it. In the bullpen he'd do something with his pen and on stakeouts?! Jesus, you had to watch him more than the object of observation otherwise you turn around and he's hanging from the ceiling or something. (True story.)

But to never move like that again? Never run ahead of me chasing a subject, never walk with me up the bullpen stairs, never carry me to the bedroom again. How could he live like that? Hell how would he even cope with that?!

Part of me knows the answer: he wouldn't. Jay wouldn't be able to move on from it. I mean for him to not be a cop...I don't know. I can't even think right now. I'm just going to focus on getting home in one piece.

I'm doing this new thing Mouse told me he does whenever Jays gets in trouble: take a deep breathe and calm the fuck down. See when we were walking, he shared his 'wisdoms' with me. Like how he tries his best to not focus on things in the future, or the 'what if's, especially when there are bigger problems to deal with. For example, Jays condition. As he told me, yes, it's tough, but the sheer fact Jay is alive is something pretty amazing. He was breathing on his own, he was conscious, and he remembered who he was and who I am.

Progress. Plus sides. Optimistic viewpoints.

"_You hafta remember, this is Jay we're talking about. The guy once held a grudge for two years over a hockey game, he's way too fucking stubborn to die. Hell, there's been times I believe he's forced his body to survive by sheer will. Nothing else just- 'fuck you logic, heart you __**will**_ _keep pumping and lungs you __**will**_ _keep expanding or so help me I will take my hands, reach down my throat, and do it for you.'"_

That was the point where Mouse got me to laugh. It was weird and foreign, like I was saying a new word for the first time. But it was still a laugh, and I made a mental note to hang out with the guy more often, he clearly has experience in the emotionally distressed area. That...and well, he's almost like Jay in some ways.

Needless to say, both of them were pressed on my mind as the city lights flashed in the passenger side window. Alvin volunteered to drive me home. I was thankful, knowing he wouldn't press me to talk, especially after I made it clear I didn't want to. Albeit it was also like three in the morning at this point, so we were both pretty exhausted. The rest of the team was leaving the hospital as well, save for Mouse and Voight. The latter told me he'd call if anything changed, which subtly let me know that staying was his way of working out his guilt, not only for Halstead getting shot, but for most of the day's events.

Mouse on the other hand, I knew was staying because it was the only was he would stay sane. Which I completely understand. The only difference being, I was craving a long shower and the left side of my bed still smelled like Jays cologne. Plus, some of the thinking I had to do involved Mouse and I didn't have the mental barriers to not ask my questions out loud to man.

So, as I stood fumbling with my keys, the huge ball of worry and anxiety was still bouncing around inside me, except now the pain was less pronounced. I suppose I had just gotten used to it, or maybe I had accepted the fact that at this point either he was going to get better and be fine, or he was going to die. The second option simply felt ludicrous, especially considering the fact that he shouldn't have made it this far, and by doing so, there is no way he's going to just give up now.

Like Mouse said. He's a stubborn smartass. But as I flop into my bed, still damp from my shower and half dressed in his Rangers T shirt, I am able to inhale his scent and give a small smile. He's _my_ stubborn smartass. And he'll be okay. He has to be. It's impossible for him not to be.

Besides, when he wakes up, he has some explaining to do. Not just to me but to the team as well. Like where and when he learned to how to fight like that. And why someone would decide to sneak into his hospital room just to say hi, then have the skill to disappear off a two story roof afterwards. Or better yet, if he isn't being recalled to the Rangers, what the hell was in that letter that he was so scared off.

Groaning, I turn over in bed, staring at my phone on the nightstand and willing it to light up with Mouses number so I can chew him out. He obviously knows _something._ Especially from that 'You think you know everything about Jay?' line he threw out there in the conference room. I can almost picture myself cornering him in Halsteads room while Jay's asleep, asking him in a snarky voice: "_Care to explain that one?"_

Unfortunately, I feel like I won't ever get the chance. Probably because if we were in his room I'd be sitting there staring at Jay, going through the process of freaking out and calming down repeatedly in my head. But, another thing Mouse told me, is that you never get use to what it feels like knowing Jay is hurt.

Of course after he said that I told him he should have been a psychiatrist, to which I got the victory of making _him _laugh. We're one for one.

The clock blinks at me, mocking my overactive brain with its neon sign. I've been laying here for almost a half hour and it's felt like a lifetime. Sighing, I curl into a ball, stuffing my face into Jays pillow.

It's gonna be a long night.

* * *

**Well...I mean it's an update right? Right?**

**I'm so sorry for making you read that. But A reviewer made a good point. Erin's mental state needed to be addressed. Plus, depending on what people want (COUGH COUGH REVIEW) depends on whether Jay wakes up next chapter or we see Jay in the hospital from other people's point of view. I.E. Alvin or Antonio or...whoever you people want. **

**Like peasant asking for food, I never stop begging-REVIEWS? ANYONE SPARE A MOMENT? GIVE A POOR GIRL SOME REVIEWS?**

**P.s. (give me a shout you Extreme Ways readers…)**


	9. Black and Blue

**I'm baaaccckkkkk...;D**

**Black and Blue- Miike Snow**

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

"No, I'm just saying, I'd like to know who they are."

"Know who? What're we talking about?" Sighing, I glance exasperated at Antonio as he exits the break room, stirring his coffee. I had hoped he would tell them to shut up, but that doesn't seem to be the case as he sits at his desk and starts to listen intently to the conversation.

"Jay's team. Like his old one, the guys he served with in Afghanistan."

"Why do you want to know them? They ain't none of your business Ruzek. And most military guys aren't very forthcoming when it comes to their time overseas."

"How would you know?!"

"Okay, Al, if you suddenly had a couple of annoying cops jumping down your throat about your time in the service, how would you respond?" I manage a smirk as Alvin flips both Kevin and Adam the bird. Staring down at my phone again, I fidget in my seat, waiting for _something_ to happen. We have literally done an entire month's worth of paperwork in the last four days, what with everyone being told-no, _ordered_\- to leave the hospital, we all ended up at the precinct.

The problem with intelligence, is we really don't know how to relax.

And I guess Mouse doesn't know how to text back, either.

After the initial fiasco at the hospital, and my night in his bed that ended in nightmares, time has since flown, and it's been three days of blurriness and papercuts. For everyone. Mouse has been the only one to really stick to Jay, going home only to change clothes and shower, sleeping in the chairs the first two nights then eventually being rewarded a cot by Mrs. Goodwin when it became clear he wasn't leaving.

He has been my lifeline. I text him a million times a day and his responses are what keep me sane at work. The unit was put on leave for leave for a day by administration, in which we all showed up and wrote reports, unpaid, because no one could do anything else. We all were required to give our statements that day anyway, so staying at home was considered even more pointless.

Voight has been busy fighting to keep this case, the commander thinking he's going to go off the reservation in revenge. Hank has been trying to explain that off the reservation is basically where these guys operate, and if we are to catch them, we might just have to load a couple guns and follow them into the unknown.

"Hey, if everyone's done with the hormone therapy, we do have a case to work." Everyone's heads snap around, with the exception of me who was able to see Hank coming in the side door. And of course Alvin, who just is never surprised. However, all eyes are eager as we stare at the picture Voight pins to the board. He gives me the go ahead and I start talking.

"Anton Chekov. Came to America in '89, and has been in jail more than he's been out of it. You all have his record, and what Alimony Prison didn't include in there our gang database did- he has known affiliation with multiple gangs. Apparently he started out with the Gd's, then turned to the Los Lordes, before eventually hitting up the West Side Marks. He stayed there for a few years before disappearing. No sightings, no arrests. Looks like one day he just went 'poof'." I snap my fingers with emphasis, before Antonio picks up where I left off.

"So these guys, the 'no name' gang that everyone's terrified of but knows of, currently over twenty four of them are sitting in cells right now. Now, these guys M.O., is torturing people to death, then cutting off their heads to send to the police or their loved ones, and leaving the body in various twisted positions." He pins a couple photos to the board, making me swallow as the memory of the bank rears its ugly head in the pictures of their bodys.

"Well they definitely make an impression." Atwater mutters.

"Yeah, but look at how mutilated their bodies are. I mean, I understand killing one person for not paying a debt or something, but this is a bank, a very nice bank in nicer part of Chicago. And yet they didn't take much money, only about a mill."

"Which _can_ be classified as a lot...except at that time that bank had almost half a billion in cash. The currency exchange truck came the next day to pick up the cash and bring it to the national depository. These guys were in the vault with enough money to buy out the entire city and they only took a million?"

"So this was big to them. Maybe the people in the bank weren't important, but the way they were killed-that's a message." The team nods as I sum up the past voices.

"Hey sarge." Voight nods to Kevin who is looking at his phone.

"I just got this from one of the C.S.I.'s. Apparently the murders weren't the only message there. He snags a paper from the printer, then slaps it on the board. We all move closer to examine what must be a wall in the vault, but on it is some symbols, looking Arabic. Drawn in blood.

"Do we know what language this is?" Kevin shakes his head, but then tacks up another picture. A symbol, a crudely drawn, bloody capital 'R', right below it.

"This symbol came up in a sealed file, that Mouse managed to unseal while at the hospital. The group's signature, this R as well as the way they committed each murder and the organization of that warehouse-it all adds up." Kevin pauses for a second, like he's hesitant to say their name.

"Anytime today Atwater." The colored man stares at Voight.

"You ever heard of the Riders?" I watch, confused as Alvin closes his eyes and sighs.

"Bloody hell." He murmurs, scrubbing his hand with a face.

"You know these guys Al?" He nods.

"Yeah, and they're not your average gang. Shit, you couldn't even classify them as a cartel. This group is huge. They have eyes and ears everywhere, and a hand dipped into just about every legit crime organization. And they're dangerous. Way dangerous. Most all of them who aren't pawns are trained in a million different ways to kill, and ninety percent of them are just down right insane. They won't hesitate to kill a cop is needed."

"These guys kill cops? How come we've never heard of them before?" Nodding in agreement with Ruzek, I'm staring confused at the picture of the bloody message as Alvin answers.

"Yeah they do, but only if they have to, which is a rare occasion. These guys are smart. They know if they killed police they'd get too much heat, and if they are surrounded, they will give up, because odds are they'd be more use getting information in prison. And if they're too valuable to go to prison, then they have plenty of lawyers and judges in their pocket to get out of whatever charges they are facing. And if all that doesn't work, they will break out of wherever they are being held and just operate as a wanted fugitive." My phone buzzes and Alvin pauses.

"Look these guys...they would gas up a police precinct and kill fifteen officers just to get one guy. They don't care." The tiny amount of weight that had faded from the atmosphere of the bullpen is slammed back down with his words. Maybe we had hoped that these guys wouldn't be as bad as we thought, and now, it's pretty obvious they are ten times worse. And as I read Mouse's text and start to collect my coat and keys, it's becoming painfully obvious that this is going to be the hardest case of our careers.

* * *

"Hows he doin?" Mouse's ragged face jerks up to meet mine. He blinks a couple times, and I know the answer before he even speaks.

"Vitals are holding steady, and he's breathing on his own. No sign of infection." I can't help the giddy smile that emerges on my face. The excitement in Mouse's eyes are a reflection of my own. The past three days have seen another surgery to drain the fluid buildup around his spine, and to remove the remaining fragments of the bullets that were considered non threatening. In fact the doctors had debated removing them at all, their position meant he could have lived his whole life with them in his back and wouldn't have had a problem. But they figured since they were going in anyway they might as well.

After that operation the swelling has stayed down, and his vitals slowly the climbed back into a better area as his body seemed kickstarted itself. Mouse had updated me as the doctors told us he was finally recovering from shock, and his lungs were starting to function at a semi normal rate while they healed. Multiple x-rays and a couple CT scans of his back confirmed that there was no break in spine, and as far as they can tell from the images they have his spinal cord and nerves seem uncompromised. They can give no reason him not to wake up with full capability in his legs.

I peek into his little private ICU room, watching as a couple nurse adjust various tubes and change the I.V. bag.

"They're taking him off the meds. Hoping to get him to wake up, although Rhodes said it still might be a day or two until he's fully conscious." I nod again, transfixed by the small glimpses of his face I get around the medical personnel. They kept him in a medically induced coma for the duration of his time on the ventilator.

In a very messed up way, that helped me focus, because I knew there was zero chance of him being awake and talking. Now however, he could wake up. And like actually conscious not "hey I'm about to almost die and I can't talk but how are you" kind of awake he was the last time I was at Med.

Four days. Four days of not seeing him, not touching his face or holding his hand. Four days of me going straight home and heating up leftovers, taking a shower then watching one of those documentaries Jay loves until suddenly I'm waking up on my couch and I have twenty minutes to get my ass down to the station.

Four days of not hearing his voice and not feeling his fingers on my skin, of not feeling his stubble against my cheek as he kisses me. Four days of not going to sleep with my arm draped across his chest, feeling his chest softly rise and fall and hearing the soft sigh as he finally drops into sleep himself.

It's weird, the things we find we miss the most when they are gone.

So many times when we would sleep over each others apartments I'd lay awake, long after he'd started snoring softly. I would stay, eyes wide open and staring at nothing, letting the feeling of him beside me heal my soul.

After Terri, I spent less of that time healing and more of it worrying about him. I would never ask him to give up his job just so I know he'd be safe, and he would never ask me, although I know he worries about me constantly. Our badges mean so much to each of us, moving beyond just arresting bad guys and settling into somewhere so much deeper that it's almost an obligation for living.

I just hope he still remembers that in the months to come as I'm going to make him stay far away from the precinct while he recovers.

"You can see him now." I'm jolted from my thoughts as April exits the room, sending me that passing remark as she walks by. I nod, but make no move to enter the room. They _just_ stopped giving him those drugs, so there's no way they are out of his system enough that he could wake up. I refuse to go anywhere near him until he is awake enough to tell me to stop crying.

See the other main reason I haven't gone back to the hospital is that I'm afraid if I do, I will take one look at him and just start bawling my eyes out. There's also that voice, that evil little voice housed in the back of my mind that gives me this irrational fear, that going back into his room would mean him having another health crisis. That I left him in that warehouse when he needed me most, and I'm the reason why he was shot.

But this is also the voice that convinced me I killed Nadia, and that if I stayed anywhere near anyone else I loved, they too, would die, and it would be my fault. After this philosophy almost got Jay killed, well, I no longer listen to that voice.

"You go. I'm going to go tell the team." Mouse dips his head, in appreciation and understanding. I have found that he understands me more than most and while sometimes he'll call me out on shit, make me talk, he also tends not push me, like he can tell just by my demeanor that I'm not ready. Like now, as he pauses at the door.

"Wanna bring me breakfast tomorrow?" It's a sly little invitation, a wide open door. Coaxing me to come in to see him, because he knows that I might wait too long, and Jay would wake up without me there. So instead of brushing it off like I want to, I force myself to nod, swallow past the dryness of my throat and ask what he wants.

He smiles, for the first time in a while.

"Surprise me."

* * *

Voight's head perks up as I climb the stairs. The guys must've been conversing about something, although not very important because Hank is leaning casually against the door frame of his office and most the guys are sitting in their chairs.

We have slowly gotten better, me and him. I guess both of us needed time to understand and accept that what's done is done. In fact the whole team seems to have resettled itself back together. Everyone knows what was said in that office, as I know we weren't exactly quiet and the gossip train has ran itself around the team, although I think they were careful not to let it run around the precinct too. Everyone's found their reasons to take a deep breath and forgive, to move on for the sake of each other.

"I didn't think I'd see you back here today." I glance at my phone. Its nearly five, and the guys were probably trying to decide if they were going to leave, and if they did, were they were going to go. We've stayed away from Molly's the past few days. Maybe because we didn't want to drag our miseries to that happy bar, or maybe because the paramedics who brought Jay in were from Fifty One, so walking in there we'd be meet with pity, something all of us loathe.

I just stare at him for a long moment, the silence making my eyes well with tears. Hank's face softens.

"Hows he doin, kid?" I swallow, then give a soft gasp as air suddenly seems less abundant.

"They took him off the ventilator. He's breathing on his own and his vitals are up. Considering everything they can see, they think almost no damage to his spine and no sign of infection." I hear the collective sigh of relief and happiness from the team, but I can't really process it. My eyes stay locked with Hanks.

"How are _you_ doing?" Nothing can really describe my facial expression, I really just flit through emotions before finally settling on a tiny smile.

"He's going to wake up." I manage to whisper, my voice sparkling with exhilaration. Hank stands straight then open his arms with a little smirk.

"C'mere." I move the two steps into his hug, letting out a little elated laugh along the way. I don't start crying; my eyes water and my head feels like exploding but I refuse to start crying.

"I'm proud of you kid." I nod into his shoulder then step back, holding him at arm's length.

"Damn it Hank, I'm trying not cry." This makes everyone chuckle as I sniff rather loudly and dig the palms of my hands into my eyes. Then I look my both straight in the eye and tell him I'm going to fake being sick for a couple days to get out of work. Which earns another laugh.

"I'm gotta bring Mouse some breakfast tomorrow. I'll let you guys know if he wakes up." I'm waiting for the "oh sure, make us slave away on this case" but it never comes. At first I think it's because they are angry about it, or at me for something, until I look around and notice there is no anger on their face but something else...relief maybe? Concern? Worry? Actually it's more like all three, but maybe not just for Jay but for me too.

Aw. They care.

"Why don't you bring him a copy of the message from the bank. He has his laptop right? Maybe he can figure out what it says."

"Yeah sure." I reply as Antonio stands, grabbing his coat. Everyone seems to follow his lead, packing up for the day. Hank gesture to my keys as he locks his office.

"You got your car."

"Yah."

"Come one I'll drive you home." I smirk.

"That's nice, except then somehow I have to get breakfast and get to the hospital tomorrow." Voight smiles as we turn and start to walk towards the stairs. He wraps an arm around my shoulders.

"I'm aware. And you're buyin." This sets me laughing, the devil.

"Skinny Pancake it is."

* * *

**Jordan's P.O.V.**

"So then, he's okay." I feel the punch from Jesse, playful on my shoulder.

"Yeah doofus, he's going to be fine. Almost five months of Physical Therapy, but he's going to be fine. Any loss of feeling in his legs would be from swelling because of the bullet wounds, but the feeling will return as the swelling goes down."

"Thank god." I exhale, resting my head in my hands. Now very well rested, it's easier to keep my emotions in check as we discuss our Lieutenant. The others had a hard time, but not quite like me. Never really quite like me. Jess can always be a little calmer-or perhaps more stressed-as she understands most medical jargon.

When Jay found me in my Sophomore year of college, I was an emotional black hole. I wouldn't do anything, I didn't care about anybody, and most nights I found sleep only through alcohol or pure exhaustion. I was passing all my classes mind you, mechanical engineering was something I found very easy to grasp. The workload was the worst part, but more because I was lazy, not because I didn't understand it.

We met in the back of an Advanced Calculus class, where instead of taking notes he was reading his brothers first year medical school book. When I asked why, he simply said "because sitting here taking notes on stuff I learned two years ago would be a complete waste of time."

The whole situation was abnormal for me, really, it was. Most days I wouldn't talk at all, and when I did it was because I absolutely had to. But there was something about that kid, as he sat there in a ratty 'University of Chicago' tshirt and sweats, not even bothering to pay the least bit attention to the professor's lecture, that made me talk. Made me scoot over, hand him a headphone and make him move the book so I could read too.

He pulled me out whatever you'd like to call where I was, and he did so without mercy. He didn't take my shit, my whiny, lazy, self pitying attitude. In fact, he loathed me for it. So, in my anger, I decided to change just to spite him. Which probably saved my life. Our Junior year he told me about his brother who happened to meet a girl with my last name, whom I guiltily admitted was my sister.

They met, then he took us to meet Grayson one day, and Adams just about fell into our laps one time in study hall. By senior year we had met the famous Rachel, and though most of us felt she was a hard ass, I liked her and every comment of sarcasm she had. We had, without knowing it, already become a family. A crazy, wild group of young adults with fucked up past's, and yeah maybe we didn't care as much for our personal safety as we should have, but we meshed, in the tightest way possible.

When we heard Jay was going into the Army to join Rachel, some sort of special missions task force, we were terrified. Or at least, I know Jess was.

"_What if something happens to him and we aren't there to help? What if he comes back different?! We'll lose him if he goes, I know we will."_

Mind you, the second I got the news I instantly decided on enlisting with him, but it took Jess a full twenty minutes of her ranting before she realized that. And of course if I was going, so was she. And at about that time in our fight there was a knock on the door and hey, guess what, Grayson had talked to Adams and decided that they were going with him.

And that's how it all started really. I mean the summer before we went to basic was absolutely _insane_, and I doubt we'll ever have so much fun again, but it was just what we wanted. And while we became more dangerous and maybe a little more psychotic with our training, we never lost that "zero fucks given" attitude.

Until we learned what the sands were really about. I guess then we kinda grew up.

But we're still crazy. It's probably the reason we're all still alive. That and Miss Jessica Romana, because when she graduated CU, she had her full degree in emergency medical. She was a certified EMT, field technician, and she watched more surgeries than most med students could stomach.

Couldn't even tell you how many times she's had to patch us up because we refused to go to the hospital. Which is great for us, but really, I can see how much fear it puts in her when she understands just how bad an injury is.

It's the reason why I was so afraid for Jay. Her reaction, scared the living shit out of me, and everyone else. Rachel told us we are going to look into it, but the last couple days have been us getting the dust out of the compound, sleeping, eating, and just getting back to normal. When we aren't arguing about where to eat or unpacking we are working on the cars, which arrived two days before we did. It's kind of stupid, seeing as before we put them into storage we had them about as close to perfect as they would ever get, but hey, the guys need to do _something_ and going clothes shopping with us isn't on their list.

Not that it's on our either, but let's face it we can't live out lives in fatigues, sweatpants, and our combat uniforms.

But Jay's okay now. Hes going to wake up and be okay. Which means we need to get back to work. And I don't just mean getting up to date with Vinny's cousin who turned traitor on his family and joined a rival gang. We need to find out every business deal, footstep and helping hand the Riders have done in the time we've been gone.

We also, get to look into Will's death, because that was just wrong in so many ways. And with Jay in the hospital and Intelligence knee deep in something they don't know how to fight, it's looking less and less likely that some random guy decided to try and rob Jay's apartment and "happened" to fatally shoot his brother.

I just hope we aren't too late to stop a war.

* * *

**So there you have it folks. A little back story, some catching up in time...and next chapter we get to see things heat up a little more.**

**Review please :)**


	10. Reykjavik

**Ho boy. This is going to be rough. Me doing fluff instead of action and whump?! Two chapters in a row?! ANARCHY!**

**Warnings: mentions of child abuse, sexual abuse, self harm, and depression. **

**Reykjavik- Brolin**

* * *

**Mouse's P.O.V.**

"He was fifteen?!"

"Ya- no, no wait a sec. No this was before V, so he had to have been….uh...almost twelve." Erin nearly spits out her food in shock. Her wide eyes snap to me, maybe the second time in the last hour they haven't been glued to the hospital bed.

"Jesus." She whispers, leaning back into her chair and letting her dull brown orbs drift back to Jay. He looks so much better than he did with the tube down his throat, and even better now that he no longer needs the oxygen mask. If I look hard enough, I can even imagine that color has come back to his cheeks.

The doctor had said it was going to take a while. Oh excuse me, _Rhodes_. I'm on a first name basis with almost all the staff here. Especially Sharon Goodwin, which is funny, since normally I couldn't charm a goldfish, (sucks coming back from war doesn't it?) yet somehow I've managed to become close friends with the director of the hospital. She and Connor have personally walked me through every step, every procedure and every risk that came with them. They explained the infections, the signs of complications, led poisoning, delayed symptoms-everything.

I feel like I should have an honorary medical degree. Or maybe an appointment with Dr. Charles. Considering the first time they tried to make me leave I was literally a word away from stabbing medical personal.

"_I'm not leaving him! You understand me?! I don't care if I have to shove a knife through my abdomen so I can be in the bed next to him! I'm NOT leaving!"_

"_Mr. Gr-"_

"_No! Shut up! You have no idea, no goddamn idea what he's been through. He doesn't deserve to be alone!" My hand tightens around the knife in my pocket. The one I will never go outside without, becuase its the last piece of my old life I can carry and because maybe I'm not quite past my PTSD. _

_I will use it. I will. If it keeps me from having to leave him, I will kill. _

"_He's not going to be alone sir-"_

"_Enough." The single word stops everything, the room silenced by the authority of the voice. _

"_Your Mouse?" My eyes flicker from the lady in front of me to the body lying prone under hospital sheets. I can't leave him. He can't defend himself and if some one came back to finish the job...no. I refuse._

"_I'm...yeah." My line of sight moves back too the woman in front of me. I swallow as I meet her gaze, recognizing the same steel that is visible in Voights eye and in the eye of every soldier who'd seen combat. The one that comes from pain and loss and pure strength._

_Jay has is too._

"_I'm not leaving." Her head dips to look at her shoes for a second and she takes a deep breath, looking completely done at this point._

"_Mr. Gerwitz, my name is Sharon Goodwin, I run things here at Chicago Med. The hospital's visiting hours are from nine AM to nine PM. It is well past that time. Transportation can be arranged-" My fingers tighten on the knife, eyes flicking around the room to asses the people who would be most of an issue for me._

"_...although some of your team is still here if you need-"_

"_Mrs. Goodwin." My voice is impossible calm and immeasurably strong for my position. I am exhausted, an emotional wreck, and mentally strung out. Jay was shot, could never walk again, could never wake up, and this lady is trying to make me leave his side._

"_Yes?"_

"_Jay Halstead is not just some patient."_

"_I never-"_

"_He's my __**brother.**_ _Do you understand that?! He is __**dying **__and __**you**_ _are trying to stop me from being with him."_

"_Sir-"_

"_THAT IS MY BROTHER!" I am screaming, I am sobbing, and I don't care anymore, I don't, because while he is here he is not, while he is alive, he may not be for long and I can't deal with that._

"_HE'S ALL I HAVE LEFT!" My breath catches suddenly, and I gasp for air. _

"_Please...I can't...I won't…" Mrs. Goodwin's eyes have gone through a volley of emotions, but now they are dark and cold. I am ready to fight my way out of this, I have the plan in my head, my finger on the cool metal switch that will flick out the blade._

"_Get Mr. Gerwitz a chair." Her voice seems as hard as her eyes. _

"_It's going to be a long night." _

"Mouse?"

"Hmm?" I blink suddenly, my eyes burning slightly, though from memory or dryness I don't know. I move to look at Lindsay, forcing myself to look away from Halsteads prone body. I busy myself with adjusting my plate on my knees, catching my breakfast before it slides to the floor.

"This is really good." Erin gives me a flat look, probably because I talked with a mouth full of crepe and strawberry, but for a millisecond the action reverted her back to her old self, which counts as an accomplishment. That's been my goal lately, making sure Erin remember it's Jay lying in the hospital not her. Not that she'd forget something like that, but I made a promise to Jay long ago, that if something ever happened to him I would look out for Erin because she definitely wouldn't be looking out for herself.

Her smirk fades.

"When did he…"

"Find Will?" She nods. I shrug.

"Dunno. I think he was ten or so when he met his mother. Now _that_ was a tear fest."

"I thought you weren't there."

"Oh I wasn't. But it was _very _hard listening to the story. I guess his mother saw the scar on his neck and said his name and he barely recognized her and then the next thing you know they're both bawling their eyes out next to the cheerios in a Walmart."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I felt like a teenage girl watching The Notebook while on her period when I heard it." This earns another half hearted smirk, one that doesn't reach her eyes. Her face has lite up more than once in the past couple of days, but her smiles never take away that fog that dulls her normally sharp eyes. I know only Jay can bring them back to life, can bring _her_ back.

"So, uh…" She swallows hard, like she's forcing down the emotion in her voice."

"Who's V?"

I almost spit out my breakfast. I had really hoped she didn't catch that.

"Now _that_ I can't tell you."

"Why? Because you don't know? Or because you won't?!" I catch her anger and steadily ignore it, instead staring at heart monitors attached to my friend.

"Maybe both….or maybe because it's not my story to tell." She shuts up, thank god, and instead remains focused inside her own head. Which is good because I am already dead for telling her about his past. Not even all of it either, just the easier parts, which is sad, especially if getting the shit beaten out of you by your father every day is considered the 'easy' part.

I had it coming though, saying that shit in the conference room. I was mad, I was so mad at Intelligence for not helping him, for blowing that take down to hell and almost getting each other killed.

I thought he was dead. When Erin called me, voice choked and broken, like someone had ripped out her lungs and talking required the very last of her air, exactly two options ran through my mind. Either he was dead, laying a morgue getting stitched up, or he was dying, and if I wanted to say goodbye I needed to get to the hospital like yesterday. Both my assumption were wrong of course, and once I wrapped my head around the severity of the situation, anger flowed freely through my veins.

They are his team. His 'family'. They were supposed to protect him. Care about him. Help him.

I didn't see much of any of that during the video. And then they had the audacity to act like they knew him and he somehow betrayed them by not showing off his fighting skills earlier.

I can usually control my temper, but the words just slipped out.

"_You really think you know everything about Jay Halstead?"_

Not a big deal for most. A huge problem for me.

See, it's not like Jay can just waltz around Chicago, completely destroying every single criminal he meets. His fighting style is so unique, so fast paced and adept; he's about as unstoppable as a lightning strike when he really tries.

The problem with being that skilled, is you make enemies. The criminals would talk to their bosses, their friends, and pretty soon he'd have well known street name. And then someone would find out his name, and then all of Intelligence would under constant threat because of him. That is something he refuses to allow to happen.

So he toned it down. Big time. He shut up about his past, made up lies when he was pressed to. Let himself get beat, just so he could quietly lick his wounds and blend in as an average cop. It kept him safe from others who might be looking for him. Because of what he is.

Because of what we did.

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

"_I...I don't know if I should tell you about that."_

"_Mouse, I need to know. There's a reason why we haven't seen either of his parents here. It's been four days for christ's sake, their sons been in a medical coma, and I have yet to see-"_

"_His mom is dead. She died of cancer while he was overseas."_

That one. That one hurt. Like a full out punch to the gut. My breath had rushed from me and I can still easily recall the feeling of wanting to cry until I passed out.

Cancer. How ironic that my one and only's mother dies the same way mine did. Camille, my real mother. Not the druggie narcissist that calls herself my mom.

Except I was there to see her fall apart. Jay was off fighting a war while his mother was finding out what it felt like to die slowly and painfully. I wonder if he came home to see her last days, or if he only got leave after the notification came that she had passed. Without him.

How did I not see it? I spent so much anger and hatred to take Dr. Rible down, to stop him from killing any more woman. And the whole time Jay was holding me back, a hand on my shoulder, telling me to breath.

How did I not notice the way he barely talked? Or better yet, how is it that I always let him slip out of a conversation whenever his family came up?

Was I really too wrapped up in myself to not notice how much he struggled with it? How he still does? Jesus, he knows just about everything from my past, and I didn't know a single damn memory from his childhood?

"_...but what about-"_

"_Erin he didn't live with his parents until he was in double digits."_

"_But...okay so...his dad…"_

"_Isn't his biological father. The man who is his father by blood created him by raping his mother. Will was only his half brother."_

I was too shocked to respond to that one. To respond to most of it really, and what had come next hadn't helped me regain my tongue.

"_He lived in Miami for most of his childhood, as a street rat, with a dad who not only didn't want him, but who would beat the shit out of him when he was drunk, and almost kill him when he was sober. He grew up believing that he was, by every definition of the term, a mistake." _

That was when it kind of clicked.

The way I sometimes caught him staring at his body in the mirror, eyes clouded and lost, a look of self loathing and pain vividly evident on his face. How somedays it was as if he could barely get out of bed, never mind hold a full conversation. And then other days he couldn't seem to look at me, or anyone else for that matter, eyes constantly trained on the floor in the most submissive, nonthreatening way possible.

The nightmares.

Not the ones from the war. No those I can help him with. I mean the ones that end with him screaming like someone's slowly, excruciatingly, tearing his soul in two. Ones that have me up at three in the morning, holding him like a child, as he sobs into my shoulder, his pain making my own eyes water and tears to stream down my cheeks.

The ones he never remembers in the morning until someone touches him, and he flinches unconsciously like he was hit. I know Antonio and Al have caught on to it. I especially know Voight hasn't forgotten the time Ruzek poked a sleeping Halstead and almost got a shattered jaw in return. Adam definitely hasn't forgot the dark bruise that showed up not ten minutes later either.

But it doesn't happen often enough for us to really address it, because while we were suspicious, individually we attributed it to various reasons.

Or maybe it does happen more often than not, and we- _I_ just didn't notice it.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd deluded myself into thinking something wasn't there when it was.

I wonder if they found them at some point during one of his surgeries. I imagine Dr. Charles would be coming into the picture at some point then. I know I wanted him to be when I found out.

"_**What the fuck is that?!"**_

"_Erin please just let me explain!"_

"_Explain WHAT exactly?! Why you felt the need to drag a blade across your skin? In the place no one would ever see unless they were literally about to fuck you?!" His skin is whiter than snow, his hands are trembling as he tries to back away from me, as if the pillows behind him can shield him from my anger. _

"_Explain why they are on the inside of your upper thigh, so that even when you are wearing boxers I couldn't see them?!"_

"_Linds-"_

"_NO! Just...did you think I wouldn't find out?! I'm your fucking girl friend you jackass!" He seems to shrink some more, his whole body shaking now, while his breathing turns ragged._

"_Erin __**please.**_" _Ultimately it's his voice that cuts through my fury and cools my temper. It's a soft voice, a weak one, full of fear. It's a voice that doesn't belong coming out his mouth. One that I've caused. _

"_How long." He doesn't answer, instead drawing his legs closer to himself. _

"_How long have you been cutting."_

What an idiot I was. I couldn't think past the fact that he had scars to realize that they were _scars._ Old, fading, nearly nonexistent. Which meant they had been anything but recent. I was so blinded by anger that I didn't see how he was collapsing in on himself, on the verge of a panic attack. I just kept yelling and then, when I finally lowered my voice, I just said something to make the whole situation ten times worse.

"_I don't judge you for your past!"_

"_Maybe because my past didn't include me thinking I was such an irrelevant piece of shit I dragged a knife across my skin like a fucking ingrate!" _

I had instantly shut up. My eyes had widened as I realized what I said, but before the guilt even had a chance to set in, Jay was off the bed, across the hall and slamming the bathroom door shut with a click as he turned the lock.

Yeah, go Erin.

I spent the rest of the night outside the door, sobbing, apologizing, begging him to come out. I even offered to leave, to never come back, never talk to him again, so long as he didn't hurt himself. I had heard glass shattering, which led to me screaming at him to open the door, all while apologizing profusely between my tears. I honestly thought I was going to lose him that night and would it have been solely my fault.

The irony of it all was that Jay had been angry. He told me later how, yes, he had been out of it and afraid when I was yelling at him, but as I refused to listen, his anger broke through, and he started to defend himself when I dropped that little bomb. He went to the bathroom to calm down, maybe take a shower.

He then slipped on one of the wet towels he always leaves on the floor, smacked his head on the sink, and ended up unconscious on the floor. He broke the mirror with his hand on the way down, trying to stop his fall. So all my screaming and sobbing had been on deaf ears.

He woke up to me cradling his head in my lap and weeping into his scalp while I held cloth to one of his arms that had been cut by the glass. Although he must have heard some of my hysterics, because the first thing out of his mouth was a playful banter that let me know he was past it.

"_You broke my door." He whispers in a weak voice. I sniffle, suddenly gasping for air to speak with._

"_You were bleeding and unconscious." _

"_That was mahogany." He voice sounds of mock outrage, small and shaky, but there nevertheless. _

"_I'll buy you a new one. Just stay awake okay? The ambulance is almost here."_

"_I don't-"_

"_Shut up. You're going to the hospital." He blinks sluggishly, before nodding slightly. My free hand skims his face, brushing away some of the blood there. My thigh has acted as a third arm, sandwiching a hand towel to the wound on his forehead. _

"_M' cold." He slurs._

"_No, you're in shock. There's a difference." Jay huffs in indignation, what would be an amusing gesture if he wasn't bleeding on the floor. _

"_Still owe me a door."_

"_Who the fuck has a mahogany bathroom door anyway? Especially considering the rest of your apartment barely has doors in general."_

"_I did work at a weed shop." _

"_I thought I told you to shut up." His smile lights up the room. So despite our situation, and the foot step in the hallway signalling the arrival of the paramedics, I lean over him, pressing my lips to his, an upside down kiss._

"_I'm sorry." I whisper. He just blinks, already forgiving me._

"_I love you." He responds._

"Erin." A hand on my shoulder tears me from my thoughts, my body jerking upright in the chair as adrenaline shoots through me, like tiny needles under my skin. I blink to clear my vision, exhaustion clouding my brain. Had I been asleep?

My eyes narrow on Mouse, whose hand covers his mouth with barely contained laughter.

"I'm going to calmly disregard the fact that you just tried to give me a heart attack and go get some more coffee." I grab my reusable cup, then stand, pulling off the lid and turning towards the door.

"Erin." I can literally _hear _the laughter in his voice. Gritting my teeth I spin on one heel.

"_What."_ I grind out. There's a smile on Mouses face and his shoulders shake with silent laughter. That's when I realize he isn't looking at me rather, but instead his hands are gripping the rail at the foot of the hospital bed. And he isn't laughing to himself, no, he is laughing with someone.

Quiet green grey eyes blink up at me, cheeky laughter glinting in them through the haze of drugs. He smiles. My heart freezes.

"You hit Skinny Pancake and didn't get me any." I think my mouth opens to do something, maybe scream or sob or laugh, but I just end up moving my lips in soundless motions.

It's like someone took a vacuum and sucked all ability to form rational thoughts right from my head. I can't move. I can't breath. I can't even think.

"That's like a criminal offense."

My heart stutters, then starts beating like a bass drum, pounding in my ears, pulsing in my fingers and lighting my skin on fire. Or maybe it's his voice that elicits this reaction. It's raspy and weak from lack of use and the tube that was down his throat. But it's his voice. Jay's voice.

The smile slides off his face, replaced by a concerned frown and a furrowed brow.

"Erin? Are you okay?" A crazed laugh bursts from my mouth, sounding almost hysterical. Am I okay. He's lying in a hospital bed, three bullets holes in his back, and he's asking if _I'm okay._

My mouth finally snap shut and I press a hand to it, nodding mutely. I'm okay. I'm okay. I am.

"Then why are you crying?"

It all comes in a rush. I register the wetness on my cheeks and neck just as my lungs expand, drawing in breath that I had been unable to find only seconds ago. My feet start moving forward on their own, my brain barely registering the sound of my metal coffee mug hitting the floor.

My knees make small indentations on the bed, even though I am so very careful not to jostle him as I climb on the bed. My hands find his cheeks and before the surprise can even really register on his face my lips are pressed against his, a long, deep, and passionate kiss that I use to convey every emotion, every speck of pain and affection that resides inside me. I pull back only for the need of air, but keep our lips centimeters apart, my forehead pressed to his as I gasp.

"I love you."

He's breathing as heavy as I am, but meets me a second kiss, just as tender and intense as the first. When I pull back the second time, I pull away more, giving him space. I don't leave the bed though, instead sliding down to sit next to him on the bed ( I was kind of straddling him.) I move painstakingly slow as to not hurt him. He shifts marginally as I finally come to rest besides him, but only to give me a tiny bit more room.

I rest my head on his shoulder, curling into his side. He moves, sluggishly at best, but almost as if he's being purposely cautious. Like he hasn't felt pain yet and he doesn't want to move the wrong way and touch on those sensations.

He drapes his arm around my shoulders, and I fist the flimsy nightgown covering his chest before burying my face into his collar bone. Theres the sound of a door shutting, most likely Mouse leaving.

"It's okay Erin." I nod into his shoulder, still crying but able to breath, despite my body clinging desperately to his.

"We're gonna be okay." He whispers, each word weaker than the rest as he drops back into sleep. I stay, laying next to him, snuggled close to his side. Just like when he would convince me to sleep at his place, or he at mine. Just like all those nights, where I lay alert. This is how we stayed. My body molding perfectly to meet his, our chests synchronized in their rise and fall.

And as my tears started to dry, the last few days of pure stress starting to catch up with me making my eyes droop, I know this is how we are supposed to be. Cracked but not broken, using each other to heal. Leaning on each other when we need to. It's been true for a long time now, but I guess this is how I finally figure it out.

I am him. He is me.

We are one.

* * *

**Wow. I actually choked on the amount of fluff there at the end. Don't know if you noticed, but I am not very good at that kind of stuff. That said I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and perhaps things are starting to come into view a little bit more, especially concerning Jay's past.**

**Review?**


	11. Ocean

**Ayyyyee my people! So I hope y'all won't get too mad, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Jay's recovery, because, well, there are more important issues at hand. That said, I will be spending the next couple of chapters on his rehabilitation and clearing up a few...details.**

**Special shout out to Marriedonavan, for the amazing revie****w. You helped make this chapter possible. And a giant thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter, you have no idea how much your kind words mean to me. They are li****terally the only reason I open a doc anymore.**

**Ocean- Boy Kiss Girl**

* * *

**Jay's P.O.V.**

"Easy, easy Jay."

"I got it!" I hiss, sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I don't have it actually, and both Antonio and I know it. The next step has my foot catching on the carpet and I crumple. Pain flares up my spine, making my vision darken for a couple seconds as hands catch me underneath my arms. I feel weird, like I'm floating and gravity has no affect on me. My muscles relax at the same time, leaving me collapses against Dawson. Which would be more embarrassing if I could just get control over my body again.

"Halstead!" There's a change in altitude, where I'm straightened then pushed back down, into a chair I think. Blinking my eyes open is interesting, because I don't remember closing them, although the past few weeks I've been experiencing a lot of that. Dawson's worried face pops into my vision followed by a sharp sting across my cheek.

"Jay! Hey, say something-" I eye his hand warily as it starts to rise again, compelling me to obey him.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Quit yellin Tony, I'm okay." He gives me a flat look so full of sarcasm it's almost an Erin Lindsay face.

"And here I was thinking almost passing out meant you very far from fine. Thank you for correcting me on that one, I'll remember it for next time." I find it in me to glare, but accept the water bottle he hands me.

"I didn't 'almost pass out'."

"No you're right, you _did_ pass out."

"Did not!'

"Would you like me to get Rhodes to explain to you the definition of 'passing out', because I'm sure he won't mind-"

"Won't mind what?" Groaning I turn and look at the incoming doctor. Before Dawson can get a word out, I stand up again, pushing off the wall but standing none the less. The low ache that seems ever present in my back flares slightly but stays manageable.

"I'm fine-"

"He pushed himself to hard and fainted." Turning with a look of betrayal I glare at Antonio.

"Did _not_." Rhodes just raises his eyebrows, only slightly surprised.

"Well then, let's get a doctor's opinion."

"Dawson come _on_-" I whine, sounding every bit like a five year old kid.

"No, I want to know." He turns to Connor. "What would you say, as a general definition, the term 'passing out' defines?"

"Uh...loss of consciousness, I guess." Antonio turns to me with a smirk. I sigh and drop my head.

"Wasn't unconscious." I mutter.

"Coulda fooled me."

"Alright ladies, can I take care of my patient now?" Dawson send me one last triumphant smirk, to which I respond by sticking out my tongue. He laughs, says something about texting Erin then exits the small gym like therapy room with a goodbye. A little bit of dread pools in my stomach at the thought of facing Lindsay later today. No doubt Antonio's going to be all dramatic about it when he tells her how the session went, as she'll surely ask. She's been telling me lately to slow down, that I don't have to push to impress them. If only she knew.

Something bumps into my legs. Carefully I turn my head then frown.

"I can walk back."

"Jay…"

"I can walk back."

"Sit down."

"No." Rhodes glares at me.

"I was just told my patient passed out during PT because he was pushing himself to hard. Which means you're overtired and physically exhausted."

"Which means Antonios a drama queen and I'm fine."

"Halstead…"

"It's like ten yards and an elevator. I can do this." He stares at me, a war battling in his mind over what to say.

Truth? It's been so slow going, all the movements and exercises seeming near impossible when I first start them. Being given the okay to start walking sounded absolutely fantastic...until I realized how hard it would be. I was making progress too, and the suddenly, this past week has been so hard, and so painful, it's all I can do to try and get through half the excises.

Yes, it makes me feel invalid. And yes, I know I'm not actually incapable and my body just needs time. Doesn't stop me from getting angry when I can't even reach my arms high enough to wash my hair in the shower because the movement pulls on my stitches. Never mind the fact I can barely stand long enough to take a shower.

I can do this. I can. I'm not stable enough to recover balance, which is what I tried to do ten minutes ago when I tripped and it pulled just about everything in my back. Hence the floaty blackness. But we hadn't even walked half the normal distance today, because I had to keep stopping to regain control over my breathing. Which was getting out of hand because of the pain. Dawson was great, don't get me wrong, but I really needed Erin or even Al.

Unfortunately, they have lives outside of my misfortune, and had to work.

But if I could do this, then maybe the day wouldn't count for nothing.

"Fine. But when we get back your going to let me check the incision, and then you're going to rest _without_ any arguments or protesting. Capiche?" With my vigorous nod he returns the wheelchair to where ever he got at and we're off.

I'm thinking this might have been a bad idea about halfway through the elevator ride. I know Rhodes thought it was a bad idea before we even got here, but it seems as though just stepping into the metal box gave me pain. Which isn't really unusual, I can deal with pain, I live with it twenty four seven nowadays so I am very used to it. But normally it's just a ache that makes it hard to do much of anything. Makes it hard...not impossible.

The pins and needles that are climbing up my back as the elevator goes down are making it near impossible to stay composed. And standing. Rhodes is looking at me with worry as I push out a hard breath, trying hard not moan. He's about to say something, but then the elevator dings, and I'm pushing my way off the contraption, knowing the sooner I get off it the sooner I get down the hall to my room, and therefor, a chair. Or a bed.

See this isn't my first time in physical rehab. In fact the last time I was in this situation it took me almost a year to get back to my full physical capabilities. Probably why I'm working so hard now, because it's only been three weeks since I woke up to a very clingy (and adorable) Erin, and I'm already losing my mind.

I need to do _something_. No one will tell me anything about the case, not even Mouse. Its very annoying, especially since everytime I ask him he just kind of gets this nervous guilty look on his face then makes a very fast exit. Which means he knows something, or did something that he doesn't want to tell me about because he knows I'll react in a negative way.

Which I will, when I find out whatever the fuck it is. Not because it was bad or anything, but because he was hiding it from me.

I'm literally panting now, hugging the wall as I force my feet to move. I'm about three feet from my room, and the fire that was licking its way up my back has turned into a million knives, stabbing into my nerves with viscous anger. I stumble, legs uncooperative. My mouth opens in a silent scream, pure agony taking my breath and strength. Rhodes is talking in my ear, catching me as I slump, knees going out. He starts talking louder, telling me to breath while simultaneously asking me what wrong. His hand move just a fraction of an inch, brushing my spine-

Blackness rushes up behind my eyes and consumes me rather suddenly.

* * *

_"...and we'll put Blue over hear, sniper to cover the west side." My nickname, however cute before, serves only to anger me more. I knew the second Jordan was put as lead instead of me that this would happen, and I'll be damned if they think this is ok._

_"Woah what? C'mon Braddock that's not even a decent scope position." The senior blonde lifts his head, face hard as he stares at me, his self appointed protege, who, interestingly enough, has a higher rank than him. But then we're in two different armies, so the ranking system might be different. Sam's been with us for three months now, we still haven't bothered to find out much about him. Just that his father ordered him with us while the rest of his team got leave. Besides, him and Matt have proved themselves more times than I deem necessary._

_It gets quiet in the tent. Well. Quieter. More like the tension rises._

_"The spot clearly and easily covers the only side of the building that has windows, if one of us needs help that's the only way to get decent coverage."_

_"I'm going to disregard the fact that you are trying to get me killed by putting me in a wide open area with no cover, and move on to the fact that you're giving me a rookie's job." Sam grits his teeth, but doesn't say anything as I demote his profession to something a first year could do. It's his glance at Rachel however, that tips me off._

_"Are **you kidding me?!"**_

_"Jay-" She sighs._

_"No! This is about what happened on the last mission. Do you people not speak english anymore?! I am fine! Get that through your heads! I am not one of your damn transfers that doesn't know how to properly hold a knife. I know how to do my job!"_

_"Lieutenant no one is saying that-"_

"_Really?!" I round on Jordan. "So, what, this is your little guilt trip then? You're upset I got a bruise or two on a raid and suddenly that means you have to treat me like glass?! No, no way. I go in with you."_

_"Not happening."_

_"Seriously?! Put Braddock on shoot, he's a million times better than me and he knows how to pick a decent sniper perch!" Adams looks between the two of us, clearly seeing a full blown argument about to explode._

_"Hey Ray...I'm not taking sides here but...he's got a point. Sam can get a better shot and he knows when to get out." I watch as all three girls turn to glare at our bomb expert. No one says anything, but finally the first lieutenant sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. Dropping her hands to the table she looks at the JTF2 sniper._

"_Can you find a better spot to position yourself?" Now it's the sisters turn to be outraged._

_"What?!"_

_"Rachel come on-"_

_"Shut it!" She snaps. They oblige, and she looks back at Braddock, who just nods, solem as usual. He mutters something about going to get his stuff and leaves the tent. The next couple minutes go rather smoothly, Rachel just outlining the change and explaining where I'm going. I'm still last to go in, so it'll be unlikely I'll see any action. I am taking the job of what we call 'the catch'. Basically, I follow last, but stay alert, so if anyone gets in trouble, it's my job to haul ass to their position and help them. Which is an issue. Right now it's pretty obvious the team feels ridiculously guilty about what happened two days ago. It also means, because of their guilt, they are less likely to call for help. Or more accurately, they'll hesitate._

_Which could cost someone a life. Because of me._

_But I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut about the position, especially since with an entire team of worry ready to bench me. I stay quiet, really, I try. But when the exit plan consists of us walking through uncharted, possibly terrorist controlled territory, I cannot help but protest._

_"What else do you want Jay?! We drop in, the nearest tunnel entrance is four miles farther than that town."_

_"And that's also the nearest town that isn't controlled by extremists. It has at least one pre stationed vehicle set by the last guys who were there."_

_"Oh, yeah, that's fantastic. Really, that's just mind blowing. We have a car. Cool. I suppose that will help us when we all die before we get the_re." _It's like it's 'let's play stupid' day. Can't they see how dangerous this is?!_

_"It's not like there are going to be people chasing us out."_

_"Who gives a shit?! Those are sharp, peaking hills, they surround the road for the entire mile we'd be on it. We'd be wide open, no cover, no way of knowing if anyone was hiding in a bush waiting to snipe our heads off!"_

_"Oh okay then do you have a better idea?!" Rachel just about yells. No, they can't see how dangerous this is. All they see is a distress signal and their overbearing second lieutenant telling them not to got to it. They don't see the danger to themselves. How could they? We're trained not to, to crave battle, to rush into danger with the smarts to get out of it._

_We are taught to look out for others. But never ourselves._

_"Rachel we can't do this we need a better plan-"_

"_We don't have time!"_

_"Someone's gonna get **killed** Ray!"_

_"I think we can handle it! We've only spent every minute of free time training to do so!"_

_"We haven't been trained how to dodge bullets!"_

_"**Halstead**-" I should stop. I know that tone. But I don't. Everyone's been staring, eyes going back and forth between us like they were watching a tennis match. Not that I blame them. We haven't fought like this since…_

_"You need to just listen to me for two seconds-"_

_"I DON'T **NEED** TO LISTEN TO Y_OU!" _She roars, pure, loud and terror inducing to most. I can't do anything but breath and blink, shock ruining my thought process._

_"I don't need to do **anything** you tell me Halstead! Get that through your head! This is **not** a democracy and you are **not** in charge here! **I** make the decisions, **not you**! Now either you go with our extraction plan, or you can go sit in the fucking infirmary until we come back! I don't really give two shits which one you choose, but we are going in. Are you with us or not?!"_

_A deep sense of betrayal floods through me, followed closely by a burning rage that settles in my stomach and pulse, making my hands tremble and my skin feel hot. It burns with a vengeance, filling my head with smoke and making it hard to think. The flames are so vicious it **hurts**, although that may just be the fact that my best friend just about disowned me in front of my family._

_Yes, we've fought before. Yes, it has gotten ugly like this. Yes, lives had been involved in all of those times._

_But she has never, **ever**, pulled rank on me. I always considered it a rule. Something along the lines of deep respect and trust._

_"Yes, lieutenant." I reply, jaw clenched, feet planted perfectly apart in attention while my face and voice reveal my anger and hurt. Jess is looking at the guys, while her sister is staring at her hands, probably trying to figure out what just happened. Or maybe she's just actively avoiding my eyes, like Greyson and Adams are. Because they think she's right._

_I don't turn on a heel like I want to. I can't. I'm shaking too hard and my ribs are screaming the amount of yelling I did. Instead I just grab my gloves and slip out of the tent._

_We climb onto the plane not even ten minutes later, masks already on. I fix the black material in my reflection on Rachel's belt as she sits across from me, making sure the symbolic blue bird is clearly visible. No one looks at me.  
_

_My knuckles are white underneath the fake leather material of my gloves. Despite being in tightly closed fists, my hands won't stop shaking._

* * *

The familiar weight of painkillers greet me as I come too, making my eyelids difficult to lift. Eventually I manage to, a familiar blurry room mixing with the same familiar beeping I have come to associate with the scenery. Including the mound of golden brown/blond "I have no idea what to call that color of hair" that resides on Erin Lindsay's head.

She sees my open eyes and smiles, the dim light glinting in her own glassy orbs. She looks like she wants to cry.

"We need to stop meeting like this." She whispers, a weary but not exhausted look on her face that lets me know I haven't been out long.

"What are you talking about, this is the best way to see you in that messy bun of yours." I rasp, voice not much higher than hers. A hand fits in mine.

"Are you in pain?"

"No." She nods, looking more at my fingers than me. Guilt floods through me, influencing some sense of self loathing. I caused this. I caused that anxiety to show on her face, just like I seem to be the cause of all her stress lately. Because I decided to play hero and made a mistake.

"Erin, I'm sorry." The seriousness makes her raise her head to look at me, furrowed brow and all.

"For what?"

"You told me I was moving too fast and I didn't listen and I'm so sorry I keep doing this to you-"

"Woah hey you aren't doing this on purpose. You were shot Jay. Three times. I don't expect you to just hop out of bed and be able to run the Boston Marathon. You need time and space and support and I'm going to give you whatever you need. I don't care how long it takes you, I'm going to be here for you."

"You're not mad at me?" She frowns.

"Of course I'm not mad at you. It wasn't your fault, and even if it was because you were pushing so hard, I'd understand. I would be doing the same thing."

"But I was pushing so hard and you told me to slow down but I just-"

"Wait, stop for a second. Jay, it wasn't your fault."

"What?" Her eyes land on me, full of compassion and caring so intense it makes my heart swell.

"One of the bullet fragments...they couldn't get it out in surgery, it was to close to your spine. Well... it shifted. You remember a few days ago, when you slipped and did that wild twist thingy so you didn't land on your face?" I nod, grimacing at the memory. That one hurt.

"It's like that released it, and slowly over just general movements and PT, it got caught in a muscle that pressed it up against your spine. The thing was, where it was positioned meant it was pressing on a nerve...but only when you were putting weight on your legs. Which is why walking suddenly became so much harder. Every step you took put pressure on the piece of metal, but also your spinal chord, so it also made the signals your body received from you legs weaker."

"So the reason why I'd been stumbling so much…"

"...was because you couldn't feel your legs. You were in so much pain because the shard was pressing on a nerve." I blink, surprised. And here I thought the discomfort was on my part, like I was just tired. Which is why I started pushing myself even harder.

A laugh jolts me from my thoughts.

"Don't be so surprised Jay. You might've been able to fool Dawson, but Al and I knew something was up. Ever since you took that fall...it was like everything was suddenly the times more painful and I saw what it was doing to you. I just...I didn't say anything else because I was afraid that would make you believe you weren't trying hard enough for me. Which would've made you try harder and be in more pain and maybe hurt yourself worse. Because of me."

I can't help it. Really I try but a grin breaks out on my face despite my efforts. She sighs, looking exasperated.

"_Why_ are you smiling."

"Well I just think it's ironic that you and I can't seem to blame anyone but ourselves, and yet we're dating each other, and constantly tell each other not to blame themselves. So if we were to get married, we could claim the official title of 'the hypocrite lovers' and the circle of dramatic irony would be complete." Erin stares at me, looking dumbfounded and shocked and overall not laughing like she should be.

"You know...because...we both said we'd never date partners...and we used to say we'd never…"

"Get married?" She chokes out, staring at me, some expression on her face, one I can't place. It's like shock mixed with trepidation and something else that seems to flower and bloom and soon takes over her expression before it all falls away to be replaced by a wry smile. It's too bad I'm already stammering a response to notice it.

"Hey, no, I just-I didn't mean to upset you Er, I was just-"

"Joking?!" She snaps. I wince.

"Linds I'm sorry-" I break off as she stands, and it's only the barely suppressed grin that abates my fear that I really upset her. She turns off the light above me while I can only manage a stare in awe, wondering what the fuck is going on and whether or not I'm still in trouble and _why is she grinning like that._

"Well, I'm going to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Wha-wait I thought…" The words get softer as the sentence goes on and she leans over to press her lips to mine. My skin feels hot where her fingers touch it.

"But what about-" I whisper, which she silences with another peck. Which I'm ok with.

"I tell you what _soldier_." Her lips nibble on my ear, and I moan, my blood feeling hot. It's unfortunate I'm bound to my bed, because the things I'm thinking about…

"If you ever get the balls to stop _joking_...that is definitely something I might be able to help you with."

...is NOT what I'm thinking about. Wow that went sideways so fast I-

Wait, Wut.

Unfortunately Erin is already out the door, saying something about being back tomorrow and bringing a something for me. The heavy woods closes with a soft click, leaving the room in near total darkness.

My head is spinning to fast for coherent thought to manage itself and everytime I try to process what just happened the ideas and emotions slam into into each other. Relief and understanding in knowing I was wrong about my inabilities mix with the ever present guilt I find when I think of what I put Erin through. Hope blooms and swirls with the mix, because even though I underwent another surgery, it sounded relatively minor, which means I'll be sore and weak for about a week before it goes away and in that time I could talk to Mouse maybe, and catch up on the case.

And then there's that evolving giddiness that's settled in my chest. I can't squash it, no matter what I try to do to calm it. It's like this unstoppable energy, and it fills my lungs and pulses in my veins, making me feel light and floaty and this is probably the drugs because my eyes are really heavy now. But I'll fall asleep with a grin on my face.

Because for all her play and teasing, I'm pretty sure Erin Lindsay just said she'd marry me.

A guy can celebrate can't he?!

* * *

**Hehe. That was for my Linstead people and because HAS ANYONE BEEN ON TUMBLR LATELY JESUS CHRIST THANK GOD HIATUS IS OVER AND THE CAST LOVES BUSHFUR AS MUCH AS WE DO.**

**Also I have the feeling we are going to get an interesting premier his year, as well as some definite whump to somebody, or somethings going to happen and Intelligence is going to be in full force protective mode.**

**:DDD I actually cannot wait.**

**Drop me a Review on your way out yeah? Please? Pretty please?**


	12. When It Comes To Us

**Hi. I exist. And though some unfortunate events I am no longer playing soccer, you get to see me prove that fact more often than normal this year. Assuming AP Lit doesn't fuck with that. Anyway. Please review and enjoy.**

**Frances- When It Comes To Us**

**Warnings: mention of abuse**

* * *

**Jay's P.O.V.**

It's been five weeks since she gave me the letter. A little over a month since Erin Lindsay walked into my hospital room after my last impromptu surgery and handed me her version of a surprise.

Yesterday marked the two month anniversary of me getting shot. Today (technically this morning) would mark the first time I woke up, and four days from now while have been two months after I actually woke up.

Eight weeks since the shit show that was a normal tuesday and turned into something more along the lines of an unintentional act of war. Unintentional being a relative term, as being shot by a Rider while playing cop has...unpredictable consequences.

For example: Intelligence being exposed to and driven to pursue the largest criminal organization that has ever existed. Why? Because I couldn't have the thought to remember to address _all_ of my assailants before celebrating.

But its _Intelligence_. And they are the most overprotective mother hens to ever walk this earth.

No joke, I have never ever had so much food in my apartment at one time. Burgess enlisted both Platt and Gabriella Dawson's help and there like three lasagna's in my fridge right now because they heard I liked it and all three of them had their own ideas on how to cook it. Which meant I came home from the hospital with rows and rows of perfectly cut and portions baked noodles in little tupperwares that where different colors so I'd now the which lasana came from which batch and would promptly tell them which I prefered.

Something I intend on never doing for fear it sparks another round of intense cooking.

Still. They also put them in container so that way (and I'm quoting this) I 'wouldn't have to strain myself just to make lunch.'

And, because they didn't believe me when I said I was completely fine to be by myself, for the first week I got a nearly constant stream of 'are you okay's from nearly every member. Someone would inevitably stop by near lunch time or more likely, randomly and without notice, just to make sure I didn't kill myself getting in the shower.

Which I almost did the second day home, but I made a point of not telling anyone that.

I hit physical therapy everyday, go in ready and pumped, leave so exhausted that it's a damn good thing my team insists on shuttling me around, because I'd be likely to fall asleep at the wheel.

And there's another mile stone. I got my license back last week. Which is great, I don't have to try and walk five miles to get milk. But anything past that and somehow, one of the team is sitting there in a car ready to take me where ever. It is insufferably annoying, especially since I'm trying to get my independence back. Hence why going home was a big thing. Also why not having to get checked on by a mobile nurse or whatever you call them was a big thing.

I can do things now. Walk, stand, sleep on someplace other than my back. All fantastic progressions of mine. Things are going well.

Eight weeks. I have been home for three of them.

And I am _losing my freakin mind._

There's nothing to do. I've watched every movie in my collection, caught up on Suits and Blue Bloods, exhausted my netflix queue, (which included a Sherlock and supernatural day) and cleaned every fucking crack of my apartment. I told myself it was to find where Erin hide all my case files, but honestly, I'm pretty sure I was just that desperate.

See there's only so many times you can be told to just 'relax and rest' before you start completely ignoring it in favor of general motion and challenge. Then again, I am a cop. A Ranger. A lieutenant that never gets to retire. A soldier and by definition, a spy.

So it's either find something better to do than browse curtains online, or face certain facts.

Like how _no one_, not even Erin or Mouse, will tell me how the case is going. Which means either it's really bad, and they don't want me near it because they think I'm in danger, or it's not going at all, and they simply have no leads but don't want to tell me to my face that they don't even know the name of my shooter.

But it's the _Riders_. It could be both, neither, or either. They are quite capable of disappearing without a trace yet are more than eager to inflict maximum punishment to any cop they deam worthy of the time.

So no one will let me work. Which means I'm stuck worrying about them constantly and if I'm being honest it terrifies me that one day Erin won't walk through that door. That something will happen, something I could've seen and stopped, something I could have saved them from. But since I wasn't there….

The raid was all over the news. No names were spoken and the chief of police gave a statement and worked through a lengthy press conference. The public's questions to the many ambulances and police transports were sated as they were informed about over thirty offenders being put into cuffs. One thing led to another and suddenly crack houses all over the city were being raided, many taking in over a quarter million in drugs and cash. Cells were filled, trial held and every single person arrested got no bail.

A victory, if one wanted a bright side. I didn't want a bright side, I wanted to help. Last week though, I came to very depressing realization that even if say, I wrangled one person into letting me see the case, the rest of them would converge on me with a resounding '_NO'_ before I could even step foot into the precinct.

Conclusion: Work, is a lost cause until I get the fit for duty thingy from my PT guy. Well, girl. It this lady who's in her seventies and who I think invented have the shit she makes me do. She also, has such a no bullshit attitude that stems from an uncanny ability to win any argument and use sarcasm about as much as the average person breathes.

I told Erin it was her future self. She hit me.

Point of the story here, is that since I can't work, can't sit around doing nothing all day but watching TV and worrying, the logical motive would be to find something else all together to get my mind onto a completely different set of problems.

The letter.

She gave it to me the day after I was self promoted to the happiest man in the world (for about two minutes until I fell asleep). I small gesture of trust and respect, as she could have easily found it earlier and opened it just so that she wouldn't have to ask me. Instead she just simply handed it to me along with a plate of non hospital food for breakfast. Not a word said, and I just tucked it underneath me leg for further inspection.

Over a month later, and it still sits, sealed and slightly wrinkled from being folded and moved so much. Only for the first time since I got back, it sits on the coffee table in front of me, not hidden behind a picture of Will and I.

I don't want to lose another brother. I can't.

The return address is machine printed, slapped on there crookedly by some machine or other.

My name however, is hand printed.

'_To Second Lieutenant Jay Halstead.'_

Second Lieutenant. It is then, from some place higher than Fort Benning and much higher than Rock Island. But it is more discreet, I suppose to send it through the proper channels. People would be suspicious should a man in a black suit and sunglasses waltz into the precinct just to hand me a letter.

Sending a piece of paper, however outdated now, is still policy. You can't hack a pulverized tree. That's why only certain things go into letters, say, things that are too important to send in encrypted email. Or perhaps somewhere along the line someone said 'hey maybe death notification shouldn't be sent by something as impersonal as an email.' Online messaging is for getting alerted that Macy's is have its christmas sale before halloween, not being informed you best friend is dead.

There are other things it could be. It's not a recall, they don't have the audacity to try that. To try to pull me back into the service now….nobody's that suicidal.

Because while there are six people ready kidnap me and move to a different country just to keep me from going, I know of another five that would make heads roll before it even came to that.

As I am not being called back and not technically on active duty, there is no real need to send me a notice as such to give that kind of information. That leaves pretty slim pickins for what could be written down.

I am not an optimistic person by any means, but I understand the concept of living life its fullest. You can only almost die so many times before 'fuck it' becomes your daily moto.

Somehow, though, I am still staring at this folded piece of paper. Yet to pick it up. It's been three hours and I'm ninety percent sure if I don't start answering my texts, that group of mother hens down at the twenty first will turn into a pack of rather savagely possessive wolves and knock my door down to kill whoevers trying to hurt me.

I made a resolve though, that the only thing I would be doing if I moved was to open that fucking envelope.

My butt is going numb from sitting on the floor for so long. Despite all my staring, the envelope has yet to burst into flames and disappear from my life.

You know what isn't helping though, is that little voice telling me that if one of my team were dead say, I'd have missed the funeral. Missed the chance to pay proper respects, to have shown I cared.

What fun my conscious is.

My phone buzzes again, somebodys calling me. I tell my conscious to shut up and reach for the envelope with a huff, hands trembling with sudden adrenaline and possible pure nerves. I rip it open, the flimsy paper casing being thrown somewhere as I shakily unfold the letter itself.

I don't read, I skim, searching for the name of the one who didn't make it home, praying desperately that it isn't her, can't be her, all while hating myself for wanting it to be anyone else.

I can't find it. Nothing is capitalized, no rank italicized. There is no name.

There's also no condolences either. Not even a signature. Just two sentences.

"_Referred through the internal infrastructure of the United States Armed Forces and as sole possible known contact, Lieutenant halstead has been selected as the only possible source for reception upon relief of : Alpha Unit 54; Kandahar/Ghazni and surrounding provinces. Arrival is estimated for Fifteen hundred hours, Tuesday, at O'Hare International Airport."_

My phone keeps ringing. Rather absently I snag it from the floor beside me hit answer.

"_You better have a damn good reason for not answering me the last ten times I called because if you don't, I'm going to personally rip you a new one for scaring me."_

"Yeah." I manage, barely hearing what she said and not really caring.

"_Yeah you have a reason?"_

"Not any more." I manage, registering how monotone my voice it. There's a pause, followed by some muffled conversation on the other end of the line.

"_What do you mean? Are you okay? Did something happen?" _She gets more frantic as she talks and I'm very aware that she probably thought I feel down some stairs or something. Or my back suddenly gave out and I couldn't get to my phone (that one actually happened but she doesn't know about it.)

"I opened the letter." My voice still lacks tone and I can't stop reading the words over and over again. Those few words stand out dramatically, burning into my retinas. "_Reception upon relief."_

Erin tells someone to stop the car and then there's the sound of a door closing.

"_Do you need me there?" _Her voice is much softer, caring and compassionate and scared for me. She's not stupid either, she knew what could've been in that envelope. She tried to convince me other wise, saying that they would've sent someone to tell me in person. Really should learn to listen to her more often.

"No." I say, suddenly overcome with the insuppressible urge to smile, and the grin that must be across my face right now probably looks psychotic.

"_Are you sure?! If...if its bad I don't want you to be alone-I can be there in five-"_

"Erin." I whisper. "It not bad. Nobody's dead."The letter flutters to the ground and I press my free hand to my mouth in an attempt to not start laughing hysterically. I lean back against the couch and smile at the the ceiling.

"_Jay...I don't understand."_

"They're coming home Erin. My, uh, my team. From Afghanistan. They're coming home." I remember the date on the envelope, when it was shipped and strategically sent. I think of the estimated time of arrival.

They walked off that plane right around the time three bullets were pushing their way through my body.

"Actually they're already here." I add.

"_In Chicago?"_

"Yes." I breath, barely able to comprehend what all this means for me.

"_Wow, that's...great Jay. I'm happy for you." _There's a small note of uncertainty in her voice, even though I can tell she's sure I'm close to them.

"Yeah." I manage, emotions suddenly surging in my chest making my eyes water.

"_I gotta go back to work okay, I'll try to come home early so we can talk more."_

"Okay."

"_Okay. Text me your preference, I'll pick up chinese."_ There's some more muffled chatter followed by a quick "_Gotta go bye!" _that ends the conversation. The phone drops to my lap and I try to force my breathing to slow.

_They're coming home._

* * *

**Erin's P.O.V.**

_Just tell him Erin you've been dancing around this for weeks._

I glance at the clock, marking the time. Only Dawson and Al still remain in the bullpen, catching up on a little paperwork before heading out. I told Jay I'd be home early, yet I've managed to plow through a solid five days of paperwork and am officially all caught up. As in 'there is nothing left for me to do to stall so I don't have to go home' caught up. I even cleaned out my desk.

It was about the time he got out of the hospital that I realized my mistake. It's probably the most common situation one could ever get in when keeping a secret- you realize you should tell them you know, but you wait too long and now you're afraid if you tell them they'll be more angry for not telling you sooner rather than the actual thing you weren't telling them.

For example: I know about Jay's past...and he didn't tell me. So for the first few weeks I thought it was good, until I realized how unfair it was to him that he didn't know that I was aware of this huge part of him.

Which means, I need to tell him. And I've needed to tell him for a long time now but it...it just never got there. Even though we sleep in the same bed and basically live in Jay's too small apartment, rarely do I come home to see him with actual energy. In fact half the time I've walked in ready to tell him only to find him zonked out on the couch with the hockey came blaring while he drools on my favorite blanket.

But now they're coming home. Or, since that letter was received two months ago, they _are_ home. So he needs to know, that I know.

Seeing how important his past and his family is to Jay, we can just say I am very scared as to his reaction.

Jay wouldn't hurt me. Intentionally, I know he'll never lay a finger on me. Not because he won't ever get mad enough to, in fact I'm sure I'll fuck up at some point that would make even the best of men seriously consider beating me across the room. Accept when that time comes, I don't think he'd physically be able to. No matter how mad he gets, I honestly don't believe he has it in him to hit me.

It's an interesting certainty, just as interesting as the way I firmly believe he will never trust me again after this.

It's not _fair_ though. Everyone knows my past it seems, or at least a lot of it, and I hate it. I hate that I'm always open in front of him, like a used book read to many times to be interesting anymore. I'm always open, and he's always shut. Where my past bleeds from me, his shrouds him in darkness, keeping him hidden and alone.

I have a goal though. I'll tell him and then I'll leave because he'll want space, a whole country of it, but I refuse to let him be the one that runs.

Because Will isn't here anymore and he won't be on good terms with Mouse, which leaves Voight or Al, neither of which will be home and are therefore inaccessible to Jay.

I have my plan. I have my exit strategy. I am in every sense of the word 'prepared'.

He won't hurt me. But he might leave me.

I can convince myself the latter is the reason why I'm afraid.

...

I watch him as he gets out of the shower, steps careful and stiff. He crosses the hall and I hear the sound of drawers opening and closing followed by some funny little grunts as (I assume) he fumbles with putting his clothes on. Finally he steps out into the hallway, walking to join me in my kitchen.

"Whats wrong with you?" He asks, rubbing the towel in his hair haphazardly, so when he removes it the dark curls flop every which way.

I still haven't moved from my chair. The chair I promptly planted myself in the second I dropped the chinese food on the counter.

_Large chicken noodle soup, orange chicken, white rice, beef lo mein, two egg rolls and extra duck sauce- you're order comes to the most terrifying dinner in the history of humanity._

"Erin?"

"I know." The words blurt out of my mouth, unstoppable, the only way they could. The only way this can happen. Because if I stop now, this is never coming out. My hands are cold and sweaty as they grip the edge of the seat, because Jay hates those ones with the hard wooden arm rests.

I never knew someone's heart could _possibly _beat this loud.

"I'm sorry?"

"I know about your dad. And I know about Rachel." His eyes darken when I say her name, as if it holds power and by using I've called upon this presence that demands to be involved.

My chest feels tight. The air is much to thick to breathe.

"You don't know _anything-"_

"I know she saved you life. I know that's how you met, and that you were only seven years old. I know that you didn't always live in Chicago, and you didn't always know Will was your brother."

I stand from my chair for some reason. That move wasn't in my plan. I sit, I'm calm, I tell him what happened and my voice does _not_ sound terrified and I do _not_ start panicking and making decisions like such that made me get up. Because then the reason is something terribly irrational like '_if you stand up it's easier to run and running means safety and safety means survival.'_

"I know that the reason you dad doesn't love you weren't his. And that your real father made you believe you were a mista-"

"_Enough." _The word stops me in my tracks. Realization flows over me, making me realize what I just did.

Tell him I know about his past- yes.

Throw it back in his face without warning-_not really on my list._

What the hell is the matter with me? I just brought up a past that he would have me believe didn't exist and I expected this evening to go _how?!_

Forgiveness is the farthest thing from his mind right now.

His eyes are a almost pitch black, his face a storm of emotion and _anger_ that makes him look downright terrifying. And that's when it hits. When It suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea who he really is.

What _really _happened to him in afghanistan_. _Why he _really _left Miami.

Why he chose Chicago to come home to.

"Who told you?" His voice is solid and cold as ice, making the room feel like someone dropped us into the arctic. I swallow, pressing against the edge of the counter. My heart has transformed into a jackhammer, slamming away in my chest, making my skin feel cold while my blood is hot.

"Mouse." I curse my voice for shaking. I keep telling myself he won't hurt me, that I know him, I _love _him.

_Do you though? Do you really know him?_

My breath hitches tellingly and my hands won't stop shaking as he looks at me, completely unreadable.

This is it. This is the part where he explodes and I get the brunt of his well deserved anger. If I was in his shoes, and this was my past, I'd already be screaming.

And then-

Then he sighs and drops his head, tossing the towel into a hamper of dirty clothes I have yet to do. He raises his head like he's a thousand years older and drops into a chair.

I manage to blink once or twice, mind processing the actions but not seeing them. Or the otherway around, I don't know. Either way, my body is still prime for a fight, adrenaline being the hormone that's making my body prepare to sprint across the room and out the door in flight.

Typical human reactions for a typical situation. The only thing atypical are the factors.

My past and his made two people not so different on the inside. At least not as different as our outer shells may dare to illustrate. And rules in this relationship go both ways.

We don't run. And we don't hide.

"I'm sorry." I whisper, sliding into a more relaxed stance. My knuckles ache as blood resumes flowing through the capillaries and my legs are allowed to relax into a more slouched position.

"Me too."

"For what?" He smirks softly.

"For scaring you." I blink, blood rushing to my cheeks in embarrassment. I realize how I must have

looked, backed into the counter like that. Its safe to assume he picked up on my panicked breathing, which he mistook as fear. Just as he assumed it was fear of him that made my feet post themselves as if at a running block.

I blink, long and hard while pushing out a breath with equal effort to calm myself further.

"I wasn't...scared of you." Reopening my eyes I meet his. Its funny how they still look dark, but I can see color in them. The lighting is weird, as only the one lamp in the kitchen is on.

However right now, the self loathing and guilt that flashes in them is not my imagination. I shake my head then walk to sit next to him, scooting closer a little.

"I was afraid of losing you."

He takes a deep breath- to protest, I assume -but I cut him off.

"No really Jay. I am sorry. I didn't mean to ambush you like that, but I've known...and every day I woke up it felt like I was betraying you and today, when you told me about your team...I just...you needed to know that I know, and I understand if you're mad at me." I bit my lip hard, then push the next words out.

"I can call Al, he can come over if you want some space from me or something-" I'm cut off by a pair of lips on mine. I stare at him, shocked and confused beyond reason. He gives a soft huff when I don't kiss back, although it sounds pretty amused.

"You were rambling." Like that's a good explanation.

"I….you mean your not mad at me?"

"Not mad enough to want you to leave your own apartment." My heart sinks to my toes.

'_Of course he's mad, come on Erin, just because he's not yelling doesn't mean he isn't okay with all this. You sure as hell wouldn't be.'_

I'd be at a bar taking shots right now so that shows who's the calm one in this relationship.

"Jay…"

"No just hear me out…" He takes a deep breath, like he's forcing himself to calm down. "I'm angry, yes. But not at you, and certainly not for you wanting to know more about me. I mean let's face it, I was never exactly...forthcoming. You didn't even know I had a brother until…" He swallows, grief flashing across his face at the mention of Will. It's been a year now, and he still has trouble saying his name.

"I'm hurt...because you didn't think you could talk to me about it." He glances at me. "I'm not going to hurt you Erin." Jay's voice is so soft and gentle and pained that it makes me want to go jump off a bridge. Shame flits through me at my reaction. At my thoughts. I knew for certain he'd never trust me again, that he'd be gone from my life in a spiral of anger and hurt. I had come to that conclusion with tangible (emotionally fabricated) fact.

I just forgot to consider that he loves me too. And a man who would carry me up four flights of stairs because my feet hurt from wearing heels for an hour wouldn't just start screaming at me for caring about him.

And he knew it, he thought I was scared of him, of what he'd do. What does that say to him. That I don't trust him? That I assume the worst and am paranoid?

That I thought he was going to _hit_ me?

I tangle a hand in my hair, willing myself not to cry. Why am I always so heartless?

"How long have you known?"

"Greg told me the day you woke up." He pauses.

"Four months?!"

"I-...yeah." I sniff, pulling my legs up onto the chair to hug to my chest. I won't cry. I don't get to cry. Not after how I acted and what I did and what I'm _doing._

"I'm gonna kill him." He growls. I blink, still so confused.

"Wait...your mad at Mouse, not me?" He clenches his jaw, but doesn't respond.

"Jay, I asked him to."

"It doesn't matter!" My body jerks at the sudden volume change, his yell full of anger I've only seen directed towards criminals. _Ah so that's where the emotion sits. Right below the surface._

"It wasn't his place to say _anything_!"

"Hey, he didn't tell me everything okay?! Hell I was slightly annoyed by the way he skimmed over everything!" He stands abruptly.

"It doesn't change the fact that the words came out of his mouth! Don't you get it Erin?! _I _wanted to be the one to tell you because I wanted to get there on our own terms. I didn't want you to find out while I was lying unconscious in a hospital bed!"

"Well _I'm sorry_ it didn't turn out how you envisioned in your head, but it had been a rough couple of days for us, so _maybe_, we needed something else to think about besides the fact that you almost _died!"_

It is literally so quiet I can hear my neighbor two floors up unlocking her door.

Jay's hands are white knuckled in fists on top of the table he leans on. He blows out a breath, closes his eyes and forces them to relax. Reopening his eyes he stares, unseeing at the wall.

"I didn't want anyone else to tell you, because they wouldn't be able to tell you all of it. They wouldn't be able to tell you what I felt, what I still feel, or what I saw. They weren't me, and it's _my past_, so how could they tell it right?"

I stare at him, struggling to grip my thoughts.

"Okay." I whisper.

"Okay, you want to tell it right? Fine." I fold my ankles across from each other, ignoring my rumbling stomach to get situated in the hard wooden chair.

"Then tell me." I take a deep breath, finding my courage.

"Tell me about your past Jay."

* * *

**Mwahaha! The cliffhangers return! Actually that was pretty weenie. So maybe more like a small ledge. About two feet off the ground. Still. We've hit the point. The clashing of two realities...or three depending on your view.**

**Anyway, I know that was boring, but it needed to happen. Hopefully you enjoyed my little clues..;D and hopefully you found them all. So open the floodgates! Let me hear your theories, the things you liked, what you want to see...I might just manage to prove you right!**

**DAT REVIEW BOX THOUGH! SO FINE AND NICE! LOOK AT IT ALL WHITE AND PRISTINE AND READY FOR WORDS TO BE TYPED IN IT!**

**._.**


	13. To Q Zone

**Hey so...I really need to know if anyone is still reading this, because if not, then I'm gonna just take it down. :(**

**To Q Zone- Godzilla 2014 OST :D**

* * *

**Jay's P.O.V. (**_**italics are from when he is a kid)**_

_Something cool and wet pats at my forehead, tugging me back into awareness._

"_Careful Ray, you don't want it to split open again." _

"_What are you gonna do about his dad?"_

"_Rachel I'll take care of it. Just listen to Shy."_

"_I killed him Dare- what- what if they-"_

"_Rachel. I promise it won't come to that okay?" He sounds gentle. A quiet sniffle is the response and Darian rushes to reassure his foster child._

"_Look I'll take Alani. We'll go back and clean it up okay? The rivers right next to that shack anyway."_

"_I'm sorry."_

"_Don't be." That sounds like Shy. And she sounds __**very**_ _mad. "That man got what was coming to him. And if it wasn't you, it would've been someone else. Alan Snow made a lot of enemies and his friends were getting fed up with him leaching off their gangs." There's movement and a small pinch in my hand. "Don't think much about it sweetie, you did nothing wrong."_

_There's a deep ache in my head, a pounding that makes me wary of opening my eyes. If the light seeping through my eyelids is painful, then the surely bright lights of the back room will be excruciating. This is nothing compared to the rest of my body, which throbs with agony. There isn't a patch of skin where the pain doesn't reside and while I've only been on this earth eight years, I have never experienced the horrible ache that is this. Which is saying something. _

_Because I know pain._

_Still I feel it's important for my presence to be known in the conscious world, even if it won't last long. I let out a soft grunt at a particular firm push on my abdomen._

_Immediately the voices are hushed, and there's a loud pounding of boots on the wood floor._

"_Jay?" A pair of hands accompany the voice, blessedly cool as they touch my face. They're to big to be Rachel's though, and the voice is too rough to be Shy's. Alani then. The roughness of the skin confirms it. Her calluses never went away despite the ten years she's been away from Jamaica. _

"_Jayson. Sweet one. You are hurt, you must lie still." I can't though, the pain has become too much. Maybe if I could just __**breath**__, then the fire in my chest would stop. And if I didn't have to focus on my chest then I'd be able to control the rest of my body, I could ignore the pain I could-_

"_Jay. Please-" Thats Rachel. My body moves instinctively, writhing in pain but still squirming towards her nontheless. It's been less than a year, but she has come to mean safety._

_A low moan skips from my mouth, and there's a prick in my arm that sends me to oblivion._

…

"_What do you mean?" Rachel shifts, uncomfortable with Dare's presence, even more uncomfortable with Shy and Alani seated next to her. They can't see it, I know, but I can tell she wants to be the only one in the room. She too, has become increasingly protective of me. But they insisted on being here when I asked what happened, and seeing as I'm able to stay awake for longer than five minutes now, they figured it was time._

_It's been forty eight hours since Rachel stole Darien's gun and ran across the city to put a bullet in my father. Forty eight hours since Dare speed across miami to get her. Twenty three since I stopped breathing. _

_Broken ribs with malnutrition and dehydration will do that to a child's body. My system was simply to weak to continue breathing, and if that doesn't say something about my situation, I don't know what will._

"_I mean, Rachel shot him. With my gun." _

_I'm scared by that. I can't explain why, but I am, because I don't know what it means for me._

"_We went back there to...clean up…" Darien is in the RNP's, so I can see why he'd feel it necessary to dispose of evidence...plus if anyone found the body they might find Rachel and I and then that would lead to Alani's non-existent citizenship or his criminal record. Which would then leave Shy alone in the heart of gang territory. Not on his watch, and not on my behalf._

"_...cleaned the blood, found the shell casing, and the bullet was in the wall. We left the place as it was though, just bleached some stuff to get rid of DNA before spreading some dirt to make it grimy again. Nobody important was there before, so no one's gonna be looking at it now. "_

"_Wait…" I croak, shifting slightly as I'm propped up by pillows to make breathing easier. I wince as the movement tweaks my ribs._

"_He's not dead?" I ask._

"_No." Alani answers, looking angry and frustrated, a mirror image of Rachel but the exact opposite of her sister who look generally frightened. _

"_There was no body, and the blood trail ended by the river. We couldn't stick around to look more, but it's safe to say he needed help." I swallow painfully._

"_He'll come after you." Rachel blinks at my words, as I'm clearly referring to them._

"_Excuse me?" She snipes, voice bitter and angry._

"_He will." I repeat._

"_Abusers do not switch victims unless their current target is out of reach. And he won't accept that you're unavailable till you're dead. So I believe you would be his first target." She snarls._

"_Okay…" I murmur. Rage, certifiable rage, crosses her features. She stands abruptly, making the night stand rumble. _

"_Are you shitting me right now?!"_

"_Rachel!" _

"_NO!" She snaps at Shy. "He's doing exactly what his dad wants! He's giving him everything and I won't allow it!" I blink in surprise and she turns on me, crossing the room in two steps so she can get close to me, her face inches from mine._

"_You listen here Jay." She snarls. "Don't you dare give him this. You are not __**worthless**__, you are not __**dirty**_ _or pathetic or tainted and you most __**certainly**_ _aren't __**stupid**__. You stop believing that right now, because I promise you, when he says those things, he's talking about himself." He voice softens slightly and it gets hard to intake oxygen._

"_I know it's going to take time Jay, I do, but I will convince you of it. I will make you believe the truth. You've been hiding from me for a year now and I understand that you were afraid of what would happen if you got close. Well guess what. He went after you because of me, and I sure as hell wasn't going to let him. I wouldn't have done that if I didn't care for you Jay. Shy wouldn't have saved your life if she didn't care about you. Dare and Alani wouldn't have risked everything going back there if they didn't want you here." She rubs a thumb across my wrist as the tears sting the cuts on my face._

"_Let me in Jay. Stay here, with us. Let us show you what it's like to have a family that loves you." _

_I look around the room, gasping for breath as I cry. It hurts. It hurts so bad, because I want this, want this like nothing I've ever wanted before. My soul cries for it, reaching for it from deep inside my chest as I look around the room. Each adult, even Dare, a guy who's killed, shows emotion on his face. They agree with her. _

_The concept of being wanted is not as foreign as I would think, because I knew four weeks after meeting her that Rachel never wanted to let me go. But it's weird enough to be thought of, and now she's saying it out loud. _

_Her thumb never leaves my wrist, constantly pressing, swiping back and forth across the pulse point there. The presence never leaves, even as I agree, nodding because I'm sobbing to hard to speak. _

_Maybe not a family. Not a normal one. More of a group of unwanted people, a group of people considered worthless by society that got thrown together. And it might just be a violent, protectiveness that holds us together, but we can stay. _

_It's more than I've ever had. So I'll take it._

_..._

"You were nine?!" Erin yells, shocked beyond reason. I nod.

"Well. Actually more like eight and four months or so." She just blinks, still in total shock. We've moved to the couch, because it's easier on my back. Erin's cross legged while I'm stretched out, my body weight keeping the ice pack sandwiched between the couch and my aching muscles.

"Jay I…" She looks close to tears.

"Erin, don't apologize. I don't want it."

"I wasn't going to give you pity!" She snaps. It takes less effort to keep calm now, I'm too tired to feel much emotion.

"I know. But it'd be like me apologizing for how Bunny treated you. I am not her and it only patronizes…" I trail off as she nods in understanding.

"So-" She pauses. "So is he still…?"

"Alive? Maybe. At least I think so. Rachel would like to believe he fell into that river or bleed out somewhere but...He never came after me though, so it's very possible he's been killed by now, if he even made it through that night."

"Okay, so you lived with them as kid right? How did...I mean with Will…" The grin that crosses my face is genuine, just as my happiness is as I think of my mother.

"So my dad...he had a thing with my mom. He was real abusive then too, so I couldn't tell you if he..._took_ my mother or if it was willing but she...she stayed until I was about three, then left him. And me. I forgave her a long time ago. To get out of an abusive relationship is hard enough, to take the kid who looks just like your abuser… well I never blamed her." Taking a deep breath I continue, past exhausted with today's events.

"So I lived with them for five years and then...Dare he, uh, got killed one night in a shootout. Alani and Shy decided to keep the restaurant open, but Rachel was sixteen and she was ready to leave. Problem was, she was determined to get into the armed forces. So she lied about her age or...I don't know hacked into the right computer one day… she was accepted and we had a big fight that ended with me running out of the house in the rain because I was so mad. I felt she was leaving me behind and just didn't care. I was hurt and betrayed and I just...I left us like that. Ran all night. Next morning I was at this small mini mart thing, on the good part of Miami for once. And I...I heard my name."

Lindsay shift closer to me, carefully curling into my side as I pause, throat suddenly tight. She squeezes me hand, encouraging me to continue.

"I thought it was her you know? But then I turn around and this woman just about sprints up the aisle and tackles me in a hug and starts saying all these things about missing me and thinking I was dead and she's apologizing again and again and...I mean I had nothing else to do so she drives me to this random place to get a paternity test and next thing I know I'm at this hotel with this other kid who's a year and a half older than me and surprise! I have a brother and a step dad. My mom, she argued with her husband- my dad, I don't really consider the other guy my uh...anyway- she argued for a solid four hours while Will and I just kinda hung out by the pool talking."

At this Erin laughs, clearly picturing the scene.

"I wish I could've meet her." She says softly.

"Yeah." I agree, still smiling slightly. "She was like an older version of you. Didn't take any shit. It was because of her I went back with them to Chicago and she knew a person or two in some key places, so I only needed my birth certificate, which she had, and suddenly I'd been part of their family since I was born. Will and I hit it off, and he knew about most of what I...you know."

I trail off as my voice threatens to crack. My mom, I can think with happiness and fond memories. With Will I...I can't. Not yet. Not with how he died. A deep ache in my chest manifests itself at his name.

"God I miss him." I whisper. My eyes burn so I close them, struggling to inhale.

"I know." Erin whispers softly, hugging me tight.

"Thank you." I murmur, pressing my lips into her hair. "For being here and doing this." She lifts her head and looks at me with such love in her eyes it takes my breath away and chases the hurt from my heart.

"I'd never be anywhere else." She replies, then stretches up to press her lips to mine. Leaning back she drops her head slightly while I linger.

"Do you love her Jay?" I blink, confused.

"Who?"

"Rachel."

A swirl of emotions rips through, anger and uncertainty at her question, fear and concern at her reaction and surge of defensiveness.

"Yes." The reply is immediate and I can see Erin drawing back, confused and offended, but I refuse to lie to her.

"I love her Erin, in the same way I love Will. The difference is with her...if she died I wouldn't be able to get past that. At least, I don't think I would. And that scares the shit out of both of us, because it goes both ways. We have the tendency to be emotionally cut off, because it protects us. But with each other we're so connected it's...she saved me Er. We grew up together we fought together, we fought for each other...I just-"

"Jay." She cuts off my ranting, and understanding look on her face. "I get it. And I'm not going to start asking you who you love more, because that's not fair. I know she's important to you and that's what matters. Just as I know I'm important to you-"

I crash my lips against hers in elation, tasting the beer dinner.

"You're not just important to me." I whisper, our foreheads touching. "I love you. I love you so much Erin Lindsay."

"I love you, Jay Halstead." She says with a smile.

* * *

**Voight's P.O.V.**

"Yeah." I answer the knock at the door and Alvin slips into my office, shutting the door and settling in a chair.

"We have a problem."

"Are we ignoring the possible gang war we started or are we looking past that to something else." Alvin's face is stony, a broad spectrum of emotions only visible to the trained eye available on his face.

"Something worse."

"This'll be good." I quip, really only wanting to go home Eight weeks since Jay got shot and we are still no closer to figuring out who, what or why in regards to the warehouse raid. Which is infuriating to no end, because (ignoring that the people responsible for the near death of _my _detective are still out there) there were so many unanswered question.

According to O however, and with the stories I've heard about this group, that may be a good thing, despite how angry it makes me.

"So I know you said we had to put Halstead's case on the backburner for a little while-" That's another thing- the team insists on calling it 'Halstead's case' instead of the Chekov murders or whatever it would be. A bad habit in my opinion, because when Jay comes back on the team, it'll be fun time trying to get him to let that go.

"-but I've been doing some digging. And one of my C.I's, I helped his sister get out of a pretty bad relationship, so he agreed to give me a little insight on the Riders." A file is dropped onto my desk, slim and empty looking. Al stays quiet, indicating his reluctance to talk less I peek inside.

"Who's this guy?" I ask, staring at a grainy, black and white photo of a shady lookin' guy, whom I feel as if I knew at some point.

"That's Tim Shannon. Thirty six years old. Or he would have been. If he wasn't killed last last year."

"Why is this important?"

"Because Mr. Shannon was a part of the DG's, on the lower left side. _This_-" Another photo floats onto my desk. "-is Raymond Todd. Also thirty six, only he's still alive. He's part of the West Bay gang, ironically now on the northern end of the city."

I stare at the two images, trying and failing to see a connection.

"So?"

"_So_….This guy was outside the apartment complex on Westford street for three hours the night of August fifteenth, last year. That's so far out of his territory, it's almost a different country for him. It's smart too, because if he did something, we'd look to local gangs first, not him."

"Al. Just get to the point. How do they connect?" Olinski's mouth sets in a thin line, that expression of his face reserved only for when he's worried about family.

"My C.I… now he _explicitly implied_ that this was what they did. These men, they were under orders, carried down not from their bosses, but from someone higher up- someone more powerful than the gangs themselves. And it makes sense really, because these guys couldn't have gone into complete opposite territory without starting all out war. Hank-" He leans forward, taking off his hat, a nervous tick that I've come to associate with worry, because if Al is nervous, well…

"-Mouse's apartment is in that complex. I think the only reason he wasn't attacked or worse was because there was a large police presence there that night- some car accident that attracted a lot of attention. But this guy, Tim Shannon? His car was parked two blocks south of Jay's apartment, same night, same time." I glare at the picture on my desk.

"This is the guy that killed Will."

"And he was under orders from someone in the Riders. This wasn't just a hit against Halstead, or against Intelligence. This was an act of power- a warning shot."

"A message to somebody close to both Jay and Mouse." I speculate, nodding as the crazy jumbled pieces of his story finally start to make some sense.

"Here's what I don't get though. A threat from the most powerful criminal organization in the world to a cop in Chicago?"

"Someone close to a cop in Chicago..." I pause.

"Isn't Jay in the Rangers?"

* * *

**I'm back...sort of...but for real guys if you don't like this story there are plenty of other ideas I can be working on. Personally I was really excited to get too certain part of this- exploring the team dynamic and how they react to outsiders who may or may not know Jay better than they do- as well as major challenge to how they work as a team and just general feels out the ass**

**But I got a total of seven reviews over the last two chapters...so I'm leaving it up to you guys. Sometimes an author's just gotta scrap an idea, no matter how much they liked it.**

**Please let me know! The review box is right over there-**


	14. Note

**Hey guys**

**So uh, I guess I'll make this official. I'm not taking this down, but for the time being, it's officially on hiatus. At least until I figure out what he hell Im dong with it. Who knows, I might change some of the already posted chapters as well.**

**Until then, I'll be working on my other stories, and most likely starting new ones.**

**To the fans of this endevour, I must apologize, because I know what it feels like to be really into a story and have that story just never update ever again right as things were starting to happen. I never thought I'd be the person to do that, and maybe it's selfish of me to keep this story up for people to read, but I don't want to delete it. **

**I love it to much, to see it due just because I can't think of ideas. Therefor- thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. **

**Hopefully, this will not be the last thing I post on this.**


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